REUTERS picChina’s foreign minister has asked U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to support the resumption of talks between China and the Philippines over the South China Sea, following a ruling against Beijing over the dispute earlier this month.
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Be proactive – Use the “Flag as Inappropriate” link at the upper right corner of each comment to let us know of abusive posts. The ruling denied Beijing’s argument that it has sole possession of the waters.
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”.
On the sidelines of the meetings, Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak of Slovakia, which assumes the chairmanship of the European Union this year, told China Daily that the EU believes the South China Sea issue should be solved “in a direct dialogue of parties affected”.
The court also concluded that China’s recent large-scale land reclamation and construction of artificial islands at seven sites “had caused severe harm to the coral reef environment and violated its obligation to preserve and protect fragile ecosystems and the habitat of depleted, threatened, or endangered species”.
Kerry will urge ASEAN nations to explore diplomatic ways to ease tension over Asia’s biggest potential military flashpoint, a senior US official said ahead of his trip.
After ASEAN adopted the statement, Japan, alongside the United States and Australia advocating the rule of law, released their version of a joint statement calling on China to respect the ruling.
China, which has long insisted that the court lacks jurisdiction over issues of sovereignty and maritime delimitation, declared the award “null and void”. “The ministers voiced their strong opposition to any coercive unilateral actions that could alter the status quo and increase tensions”, said the statement issued by Secretary of State John Kerry and foreign ministers Fumio Kishida and Julie Bishop.
“(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.
China claims most of the sea, but ASEAN members the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei all have rival claims.
The US official said he was satisfied with the Asean statement, even if it skipped references to the July 12 ruling of the court based in The Hague, Netherlands.
“So the foreign minister of the Philippines itself made a decision to remove and take out the issue of the verdict by the Court of Arbitration from the 49th Asean Foreign Minister’s Statement”, Mr. Sounry said.
Which is why, he said, “in Vientiane, and now, the United States urges all claimants in the South China Sea to exercise full restraint”.
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“China greatly approves of Cambodia and other ASEAN countries taking charge of impartiality and safeguarding fairness”, Wang said. “In relation to this, they also mentioned a menu of solutions”, Presidential Spokesman Ernesto Abella said in a press conference at the Palace.
