“One should never link the military facilities with efforts to militarize the South China Sea”, Liu said.
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China is offering $10 billion in infrastructure loans to Southeast Asian countries, a senior foreign ministry official said on Sunday.
At a meeting with the Association of Southeast Nations (Asean) in Kuala Lumpur yesterday, US President Barack Obama called on countries to stop building artificial islands and militarising their claims in the South China Sea.
In a joint US – ASEAN statement issued after their summit, both sides pressed for the peaceful resolution of territorial disputes “without resorting to the threat or use of force”.
He added that clearer rules over rights and responsibilities in the South China Sea are needed, including a long discussed but yet to be finalized code of conduct.
China’s construction work on its own islands and reefs in the South China Sea is something “we have to do” for the sake of improving living conditions for people there as well as better fulfillment of China’s global obligation, a senior Chinese diplomat said here Sunday. The night before, Islamist militants killed 19 people in an attack on a hotel in Mali on Friday before Malian commandos stormed the building and rescued 170 people, many of them foreigners.
The Kuala Lumpur diplomatic-political meetings follow a trade-related forum in Manila earlier in the week that included numerous same leaders.
ASEAN members Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei also claim waters in the South China Sea but for the most part have not locked horns with China over the issue.
The annual season of summitry has so far been dominated by expressions of concern and calls for action over the extremist attacks in Paris and Mali, and bombings in Lebanon.
She said two thirds of Australia’s trade passes through the South China Sea and as such has a very deep national interest in maintaining peace and stability in that region. “We need a consolidated anti-terrorist position of those countries that have a large Islamic community, and incidentally Russian Federation is one of these countries”, Medvedev said at the East Asia Summit. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak opened the weekend series of meetings on Saturday, calling on world leaders to confront Islamist extremism. The “barbaric acts” of “terrorists” do not represent any race or religion, he declared.
He said predominantly Islamic countries such as Malaysia have a duty to expose as lies the “ideology propagated by these extremists that is the cause of this sadistic violence”.
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The declaration of an “Asean Economic Community” (AEC) takes Asean a step closer to an envisioned single Southeast Asian market with free flow of goods, capital and skilled labour across borders. “Be assured we stand with you against this new evil that blasphemes against the name of Islam”, said Najib, also the summit’s host. “Now we have to assure freer movements and removal of barriers that hinder growth and investment”.
