The Philippines had not sought support from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) or the worldwide community in its arbitration case against Beijing over the South China Sea, and did not want to press the issue to provoke China, Perfecto Yasay said.
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The U.S. says it is encouraged by the willingness of China and the Philippines to engage in direct dialogue over the South China Sea following a tribunal ruling against Beijing earlier this month.
“The secretary will reinforce our hope that … the parties will now turn to constructively engaging in a effort to find diplomatic ways to peacefully interact in the South China Sea”, a senior U.S. official told reporters ahead of the trip.
Kerry, who attended meetings with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Vientiane, Laos said the sense there was for the Philippines and China to “turn the page” on past confrontations and “look ahead” to opportunities for solving the dispute over the South China Sea peacefully.
However, the Wall Street Journal notes that China and the Philippines have locked horns over the fundamental issue of whether bilateral talks would ignore the Hague ruling in favor of the Philippines, as China demands.
Presidential Spokesman Ernesto Abella said in a news conference Duterte and Kerry “affirmed the longstanding relationship” between the United States and the Philippines. A lack of mention of an worldwide tribunal’s recent ruling favouring the Philippines showed an understanding that sensitive issues should not get in the way of progress.
“The North Korean foreign minister will again hear not only from the secretary of state but also from others in the room, that the world is not prepared to accept North Korea as a nuclear state”, the USA official said.
He also said that he had a “constructive meeting” with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the ASEAN Regional Forum on how both the nations would proceed on this issue.
“India has noted the Award of the Arbitral Tribunal constituted under Annex VII of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea (UNCLOS) in the matter concerning the Philippines and China”.
In its decision, the tribunal said that China’s nine-dash claim has no basis.
Any suggestion that China bought Cambodia’s support with soft loans of US$600 million a week before the meeting was an “insult”, Sounry said.
On Sunday Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida intervened in the dispute, urging China to abide by the arbitration ruling.
“We hope to see a process that will narrow the geographic scope of the maritime disputes, set standards for behaviour in contested areas, lead to mutually acceptable solutions, perhaps even a series of confidence-building steps”, he said.
On the one hand, more than 70 countries have shown their understanding and support to China’s legitimate stance in various ways.
“(The ruling) has to be part of the calculation and I am confident that our friends in the Philippines will make their judgments about their negotiating position is and how to proceed forward”, Kerry said.
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The Philippines, an ally of Washington which has USA backing in the dispute, filed its case against China with the global court in January 2013, but the following month China rejected and returned the Philippines’ notification about the court proceedings.
