The panel ruled that China’s claim that amounts to claiming nearly all of South China Sea was illegal.
Advertisement
Mr Kerry made the remarks after meeting with Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay in Manila, where they discussed the South-east Asian nation’s sweeping victory in the arbitration case against China.
In the document, ministers said they remained “seriously concerned over recent and ongoing developments” in the South China Sea, where China is in a territorial dispute with the Philippines, an ASEAN member.
China, however, has repeatedly said that it will not recognize the ruling as it insists on bilateral negotiations with the Philippines outside the tribunal’s pronouncements.
And it is an arbitration, the results of which, the global community, ourselves included, believe is legally binding and is a matter of law.
The United States, allied with the Philippines and cultivating closer relations with Vietnam, has called on China to respect the court’s ruling.
This month, an worldwide tribunal in the Hague deemed the bulk of China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea to have no legal basis under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.
This is ASEAN’s first deadlock since 2012, which was also had to do with Cambodia’s opposition to language regarding the South China Sea.
Kerry said he had a “constructive meeting” on how the US and China would proceed on this issue with Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the Forum.
“That is what we have encouraged all the time and I hope that could be an outcome of where we are today”, he added.
Also on the sidelines of the conference in Laos, Kerry met the foreign ministers of Japan and Australia and all three expressed “serious concerns” about the South China Sea disputes and Chinese land reclamation in contested areas.
The Beijing-Manila conflict culminated on July 12 when the PCA verdict came out in favour of the latter; while China refused to accept the verdict, the Philippines welcomed it but called for restraint and sobriety.
Wang Yi said the China-ASEAN meeting was held in an amicable and harmonious atmosphere.
It can be recalled that China and the United States have traded barbs over the issue on South China Sea. Kerry is the first US cabinet member to pay a visit to Manila under the new administration, Manila-based GMA News reported.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi said a page had been turned after the “deeply flawed” ruling and it was time to lower the temperature in the dispute.
The meeting also tackled climate change days after Duterte said the Philippines was reviewing its “crazy” commitment to severely cut greenhouse-gas emissions under the Paris climate deal.
“This trilateral statement is fanning the flames”, he said.
Advertisement
“Sometimes, meeting like that and diplomacy, you don’t always have to include every single word that may in fact sometimes make it harder to get to the dialogue that you want to get to”, Kerry said. China has dismissed the Hague ruling as “politically motivated, illegal, and irrelevant”, as the AP summarizes.
