( L to R) Myanmar’s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayuth Chano-cha, Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Laos Prime Minister Thongloun Sisoulith, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, Brunei’s Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen, Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo and Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Abdul Razak pose for photo during ASEAN-China Summit in Vientiane, Laos.
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Malaysia’s stand that security issues in the South China Sea be resolved through negotiations received the agreement of all countries attending the 11th East Asia Summit (EAS) today.
China claims much of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion of trade moves annually.
It also said that a massive burst of artificial island-building activity undertaken by China in recent years in a bid to bolster its claims was illegal.
The United States has sent warships close to the new islands, and warplanes over them, deeply angering China.
VIENTIANE, Laos (AP) – President Barack Obama put the long-simmering dispute in the South China Sea front and center on the agenda at a regional summit Thursday as it became clear that most of the other leaders gathered in the Laotian capital were going to let China off with a mild rebuke over its territorial expansion in the resource-rich waters.
China took control of Scarborough Shoal in 2012 after a standoff with the Philippine Navy and has since deployed large fishing fleets while blocking Filipino fishermen.
China’s embassy in Manila said there has been no dredging or building at the shoal and China has maintained a coastguard presence there for law enforcement patrols.
Defying the worldwide community and United Nations sanctions, North Korea on Monday conducted the latest in a series of ballistic missile tests that have rattled nerves across the region.
Obama warned on Monday that Kim Jong-Un’s regime was dooming itself to further isolation, and the UN Security Council condemned the tests. Instead, Cambodia opposed including an explicit mention of the United Nations tribunal’s ruling, the official said.
Even before Obama’s comments, a dispute between the Philippines and China had overshadowed East and Southeast Asian summits in Laos.
Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, Obama and leaders from other regional powers are also in Laos this week for separate meetings with ASEAN.
The media from all over the world, including from the Philippines, are up in excitement as each await the event where the two leaders will possibly say something positive after the two nations mutually agreed to move the scheduled bilateral meeting them to a later date.
“You must be respectful. On the following day, Duterte will meet President Jokowi and will thereafter fly back home to the Philippines”, she revealed.
But he cancelled after the volatile Philippine president called him a “son of a whore” for expressing concern about Duterte’s war on crime which has claimed 3,000 lives.
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Obama and Duterte made some steps toward clearing the air late on Wednesday, chatting briefly, and exchanging pleasantries as they prepared to take their seats at a leaders’ dinner.
