China-Asean spat escalates

But China repeated its stance yesterday that Asean was not the right forum for such talks, pointing instead to a joint working group as well as meetings of senior officials from both sides that Foreign Minister Wang Yi said had achieved important progress.

“I hope there is no double standard, as it is not beneficial to any party”, he said, adding that continuous smearing and criticism by claimants would not help in finding solution to the long-standing problem.

Philippine Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Hernando Iriberri, said that the AFP was looking into the claim of Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio that China had occupied 10 more reefs in the South China Sea as well as increased activities in the Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal.

“We are calling for the termination of such activities, which are of concern to us, and eroding trust and confidence among the parties, and complicating the very process of negotiating” the code of conduct, Le Luong Minh, ASEAN’s secretary-general, told the Associated Press.

At a time when China has shown no signs of halting its construction of artificial islands in the disputed sea, the ministers from Southeast Asia and elsewhere, including Australia, Japan and the United States, are seeking to ensure peace and stability in the region.

But China has been accused of seeking to advance its sovereignty claims with its land reclamation programme and tensions have been rising in the South China Sea.

On August 5, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will meet with his counterparts from ASEAN.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario released a statement Tuesday saying that his country would also endorse a U.S. call for stopping all work on disputed outcroppings and any military activities.

Numerous countries challenging China’s new structures are U.S. allies.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday and Thursday.

“We are looking forward to work with member countries of Asean to push forward the implementation of the DoC and a Code of Conduct (CoC)”, he said at the sideline of the 48th Asean Ministerial Meeting (AMM) here.

The website said China’s airstrip on Fiery Cross Reef, around 1,000 kilometres from the island province of Hainan just off the Chinese mainland, is in the “advanced stages” of construction, which began past year.

“China has never believed that multilateral fora are the appropriate place for discussing specific bilateral disputes”, Mr Wang told reporters in Singapore on Monday before flying to Malaysia. Should a surveillance network with radar be installed there, there would be fears that a huge area of the South China Sea would come under the influence of China.

He also stressed that regional cooperation and dialogue are essential and more effective at dealing with issues of worldwide magnitude. “We need to raise awareness of what Asean is doing and of how the ongoing changes will benefit all”, he added.

Chinese officials say the disputes should not be discussed in the meetings in Malaysia.

Najib said the greater challenge that ASEAN would face was the need to deepen its integration as it moves toward becoming a single market later in the year.

The territorial dispute in the contested waters also has implications in the global economy as the part of the sea claimed by China is the route used to ship goods from Asia to the rest of the world and vice versa.