Dialogue vital to China Sea crisis resolution

FROM THE STANDS By Domini M. Torrevillas (The Philippine Star) Updated June 23, 2011 12:00 AM Comments (2)

Former Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr., founding chairman of International Conference of Asian Political Parties (CAPP), has come up with a formula for a “Comprehensive Negotiated Settlement in the China Sea.”

The formula: Temporarily shelve the issue of sovereignty; joint drilling for oil and gas under equitable profit-sharing; Open Seas; observance of UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea); withdrawal from armed garrisons and demilitarization; tourism and other modes of economic development, and conversion to a Zone of Peace, Friendship and Development.

De Venecia says: “The rising risks of conflict and armed clashes in the South China Sea, or what the Philippines now calls the West Philippine Sea or Vietnam’s East Sea, as large as the Mediterranean, compels us to offer a comprehensive formula for a general settlement, especially among the three ‘frontline states’ in case of war in the Philippines, China and Vietnam.”

In the midst of “incendiary rhetoric flowing freely from various capitals across the sea,” De Venecia says, “the bottom line remains: there is still no substitute for dialogue and a negotiated political settlement.”

De Venecia presented his peace formula before political leaders in Hanoi and China even long before the recent flare-up of emotions in the Spratly Islands. His formula was received enthusiastically. “I returned home (from those meetings) more than ever convinced there is no substitute for dialogue in resolving regional problems — since our greatest need is to preserve the still-fragile stability that has made East Asia the fastest-growing region in the world.”

De Venecia says that while he was still Speaker, there was a joint successful effort by the above countries and the Philippines to promote a joint seismic survey of areas in the Spratlys archipelago and in the South China Sea “as a mutual confidence-building mechanism between the Philippines, Vietnam and China, the three frontline states in the China Sea. In fact he had discussed these items separately with President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao, and the Speaker of the National People’s Congress Wu Bangguo, and their ambassadors in Manila.

Starting on March 14, 2005, the Philippine National Oil Company, China’s CNOOC, and Vietnam’s Petro Vietnam, assessed together the area’s potential for hydrocarbon resources. Data gathering and analysis — completed in 2006 — “apparently showed a good number of drillable structures, with potential for hydrocarbons,” says De Venecia.

“Unaccountably, the seismic agreement has not been renewed, though it should logistically be renewed now, perhaps with variations, that would lead to drilling for oil and gas, with equitable profit-sharing among the claimant states and to include other claimants like Malaysia and Brunei which are farther afield but which would likely join in,” De Venecia added.

Tumultuous events in North Africa and the Middle East, the continuing increases in oil prices, and the long haul for East Asian tankers from the oil-producing areas of the Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz should impel our states to go beyond conflict and stalemate in the China Sea to drill for hydrocarbons in our own front yard and backyard, in our own maritime heartland in the West Philippine Sea, says De Venecia.

The cooperative work of exploring and drilling for oil and gas fields can only continue, if, emphasizes De Venecia, “we shelve the issue of sovereignty for a later time.”

According to De Venecia, China should have no problem accepting this formula, since it was first proposed by Deng Xiaoping himself, the paramount leader of China’s peaceful rise.

Premier Deng and then President Cory Aquino and Vice President and Foreign Secretary Salvador Laurel discussed the formula during their visit to Beijing after the 1986 People Power revolution. Both Filipino leaders as well as Premier Deng found De Venecia’s formula “practical.” At the time, De Venecia was chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee.

De Venecia had also suggested to Japanese and Chinese political leaders that the same formula could ease the tensions between China and Japan over the Senkaku-Diaoyu islets in the East China Sea and lead to joint drilling between the two countries who are both starved, as is the Philippines, for oil and gas. The Senkaku -Diaoyu Straits problem had led to a deterioration in China-Japan relations months before the recent earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis hit Japan.

The ICAPP leaders, says De Venecia regard a cooperative outcome in the China Sea, including the China-Japan conflict over the Senkaku Straits (Daoyu), and the China-Vietnam conflict over the Paracels, “as a way of binding our countries in one East Asian community of peace and prosperity. Like the Western visionaries who founded the European Union, we need to begin with practical achievements that will develop a measure of fraternity and a sense of common purpose that transcends ideological and cultural differences.”

The importance of dialogue to achieve geo-political settlement is illustrated by events in Western Europe after World War II. The North Sea Powers including the United Kingdom, Norway and Germany undertook a peaceful median-line partition of the North Sea, with the oil flowing to Teeside in England and Stavangar, Norway, and the gas to Bremen, Germany, with many producing wells drilled, and massive oil platforms built in the turbulent sea, one of them the Norwegian-owned Ecofish Field.

De Venecia hopes President Aquino and Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario that the call for Joint Development, and the elements of a comprehensive package will be part of the President’s agenda during his visit to the People’s Republic of China this year.

“In the fullness of time, we will find a framework for dealing legally with the competing claims in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which regulates the use of all ocean space and its resources,” De Venecia says.

UNCLOS, he continues, is based on the thoughts of the 17th century Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius, whose concept of mare liberum — or ‘open seas’ — claims “the waters of the earth not as subject to the monopolistic claims of any single empire but as open to all humankind.”

De Venecia’s challenge to ASEAN and dialogue partners is to “work to make the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, a non-binding agreement signed by the Philippines, China, and Vietnam and all the Southeast Asian states, legally binding — to guarantee free, untrammeled navigation for all who sail innocently through our maritime homeland, a formula that could be availed of by China and Japan in the Sinkakus and by China and Vietnam in the Paracels.”

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