“We will begin with the ruling – that will be the foundation”, said Duterte’s spokesman, Ernesto Abella.
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Bonnie Glaser, Director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and Internatonal Studies (CSIS), told VOA that Washington “has not excluded other forms of negotiations and has stressed that multilateral mechanisms should be employed as well, especially when bilateral talks prove fruitless”.
It said China had no basis to claim historic rights in the area, and that it had violated the Philippines’ sovereign rights by constructing artificial islands and interfering with Philippine fishing.
None of the three nations are directly-concerned parties to the issue, said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lu Kang in response to question on a trilateral statement issued by the three countries on Monday evening, which touched upon the South China Sea situation.
The Philippines had not sought support from Asean or the global community in its arbitration case against Beijing over the South China Sea, and did not want to press the issue and risk dividing the group or provoking China, Manila’s Foreign Minister Perfecto Yasay told Reuters yesterday.
“The decision itself is a binding decision but we’re not trying to create a confrontation”.
Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also have claims to the South China Sea, a vital waterway through which US$5 trillion (S$6.8 trillion) in annual trade passes.
China on Wednesday urged Japan, the United States and Australia to view and deal with the South China Sea issue in a right attitude.
Beijing has made clear it would negotiate its claims with Manila without acknowledging the tribunal’s ruling.
The joint communique issued at the 49th Asean Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Vientiane on Sunday reaffirmed the countries’ commitment to maintaining peace and respecting legal and diplomatic processes based on the principles of global law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
He also expressed hopes that former Philippine President, Fidel Valdez Ramos, who has been appointed as a special envoy to China by President Rodrigo Duterte, will make a visit to China as soon as possible.
“The foreign minister said the time has come to move away from public tensions and turn the page”, Kerry told a news conference.
They underlined “the importance of refraining from unilateral actions that cause permanent physical change to the marine environment in areas pending delimitation”, urging “all states to refrain from such actions as large-scale land reclamation, and the construction of outposts as well as the use of those outposts for military purposes”.
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Earlier, Cambodia was blamed for preventing ASEAN from reaching a consensus on the South China Sea, parts of which the Philippines claims as the West Philippine Sea. “And we agree with that … no claimant should be acting in a way that is provocative, no claimant should take steps that wind up raising tensions”.
