Still no substitute for dialogue

(Statement of former Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr., founding chairman, International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP), on a Formula for a Comprehensive Negotiated Settlement in the China Sea.)

MANILA, Philippines — Temporarily shelve the issue of sovereignty, joint drilling for oil and gas under equitable profit-sharing, open seas, UNCLOS, withdrawal from armed garrison and demilitarization, tourism and other modes of economic development, Zone of peace: Solutions to crisis in China Sea

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 – God forbid – among the Philippines, China, and Vietnam.

And in the midst of incendiary rhetoric flowing freely from various capitals across the sea, the bottomline remains: there is still no substitute for dialogue and a negotiated political settlement.

Recently in Hanoi, before the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), I proposed “Open Seas,” Temporary Shelving the Issue of Sovereignty to make way for Joint Oil-and-Gas Drilling under an Equitable Profit-Sharing Formula (considering some of the oil-rich nations of the Middle East and North Africa are in turmoil), observance now to the extent possible, of UNCLOS (United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea), withdrawal from the armed garrisons in the Spratlys, or demilitarization of the area, tourism and other modes of economic development and full conversion to a Zone of Peace, Friendship and Development as a comprehensive solution to the continuing crisis in the South China Sea.

The Philippines and Vietnam accused China of trying to intimidate rival claimants to the Spratlys islands. For his part, China’s Defense Minister Liang Guanglie, attending the Singapore “Shangri-la Dialogue” forum for the first time, warned against “alliances directed at third parties,”seeming to imply the Philippines and Vietnam are plotting to deny to China the strategic South China Sea and its reputed rich oil and gas resources.

5 proposals in Hanoi

Together with two other senior officials, Chung Eui-Yong of South Korea and Mushahid Hussain Sayed of Pakistan, of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) made up of 318 mainstream parties from 52 countries, I visited both Hanoi and Beijing only weeks before testy exchanges took place.

In Hanoi, meeting with Vietnam’s highest political leaders, I began proposing to the ruling and only political party, the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV), the idea of a modest rice stockpile for the region, which can be availed of in times of emergency; to look into the possibilities of an East Asian Infrastructure Fund; and to suggest an ASEAN + 3 Summit or at secondary levels to re-energize our governments in their battle against the growing narcotics trade which have endangered our societies, families and overseas workers.

We also hoped to persuade the ruling parties of Vietnam, China — and Russia — to bring the North Korean Workers Party, also an ICAPP member, out of its self-imposed isolation, on the model of the successful Chinese and Vietnamese openings to the global economy.

No substitute for dialogue and concrete proposals

I returned home more than ever convinced there is no substitute for dialogue in resolving regional problems—since our greatest shared need is to preserve the still-fragile stability that has made East Asia the fastest-growing region in the world.

In Hanoi we met with both the past and the current CPV General Secretary, Nguyen Duc Manh and Nguyen Phu Throng, respectively, who are our old friends, and both actually higher in rank than Vietnam’s President or Prime Minister, and in Beijing with the Vice-Minister of the International Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC), Ai Ping.

In both capitals, I focused on the elements of our comprehensive plan for a settlement, and in China, from 2003-2004 and in subsequent visits, I found their highest leaders agreeable to concrete proposals for an agreement in the China Sea.

Manila’s confidence-building mechanism

I cited our joint successful effort — in which, while Speaker, I had some part — 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, for much earlier, I had discussed these 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 in March 14, 2005, our 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.

Unaccountably the seismic agreement has not been renewed — though it should logically 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.

Drill for oil in our own backyard

Yet tumultuous events in North Africa and the Middle East, 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 — all these should impel our states to go beyond conflict and stalemate in the China Sea to drill for hydrocarbons in our own frontyard and backyard, in our own maritime heartland in the West Philippine Sea.

Indeed the oil tankers of the Philippines from Manila Bay, the others from Tokyo Bay, from Inchon, Korea, the Taiwan Straits, and the south and east coasts of China have to sail from their waters through the Straits of Malacca, the waters of Thailand, the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea, through the Straits of Hormuz, and then to the oil-rich states of the Arab/Persian Gulf, the largest of which is the Saudi oil port area of Ras Tanura.

Temporarily shelve the issue of sovereignty

Of course we can continue the cooperative work of exploring and drilling for oil and gas fields only if we shelve the issue of sovereignty for a later time.

But I believe 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.

I recall Deng bringing it up with then-President Cory Aquino and her Vice President and Foreign Secretary, Salvador Laurel, after the 1986 ‘People Power’ revolution during their visit to Beijing, who both thought it was a practical idea when I discussed it with them as then Vice-Chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee.

Same formula for Japan and China

In fact, as Speaker of the House, I 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 we are in the Philippines for oil and gas. The Senkaku (Diaoyu) Straits problem has led to a deterioration in China-Japan relations months before the recent earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis in Japan.

In an earlier visit to Washington, DC, I had pointed out to then US Speaker Newt Gingrich and Sen. Bill Cohen, who later became Secretary of Defense under President Clinton, that any settlement in the China Sea would guarantee untrammeled passage for global shipping.

Paracels formula for Vietnam and China

We in ICAPP regard a cooperative outcome in the China Sea, including the China-Japan conflict over the Senkaku Straits (Diaoyu), 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.

North sea partition 

Indeed 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 Stavanger, 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 which we visited by helicopter in the mid-1970s, all the product of peaceful dialogue and geo-political settlement.

Open seas for all humankind

I humbly believe President Benigno Aquino III’s and Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario’s call for Joint Development, and the elements of our comprehensive package could be part of the President’s agenda on his official visit to China when he meets with President Hu Jintao.

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.

In its philosophy, UNCLOS 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.

A binding declaration and a comprehensive formula

As a modest start toward this goal, we in ASEAN and our dialogue partners could 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.

I hope the elements of our comprehensive formula would lead to the final settlement we all seek in the China Sea.