Asian Diplomats Make Progress on Sea Dispute

Asian diplomats said they made new progress in negotiating guidelines for behavior in the disputed South China Sea waters ahead of a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is expected to discuss the contentious issue with Chinese and other regional leaders at a summit later this week.
Asian governments remain far from any binding agreement on the sea, a potentially oil-rich area where Vietnam, the Philippines, China and several other nations have conflicting territorial claims. Some of the diplomats involved in the latest talks said even those lacked teeth.

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Associated Press

Vietnamese police on Sunday dragged off a man in Hanoi who was among a small group protesting China's actions in the South China Sea.

The risk of conflict in the region was underscored Wednesday when a group of Filipino lawmakers traveled to a Philippine-occupied island to affirm their country's claims there. That triggered a sharp retort from a Chinese embassy spokesman in Manila, who said the trip "serves no purpose but to undermine peace and stability in the region, and sabotage the China-Philippine relationship," according to the Associated Press, while Philippines Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said his country intends to press ahead with plans to raise its concerns over the South China Sea with a United Nations tribunal.
Still, the announcements of progress from several senior officials at an Association of Southeast Asian Nations meeting in Bali represented some of the first positive news on the contested area after months of escalating tensions. Those tensions have included a chorus of complaints from Vietnam and the Philippines, which say China has repeatedly interfered with their vessels in the sea. China has acknowledged some of the incidents, but otherwise said it wants peace, while also insisting on its sovereignty over the disputed areas.
Diplomats on Wednesday said they had reached tentative agreement over guidelines—though specifics were hard to come by—aimed at implementing the "Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea," a nonbinding deal reached in 2002 designed to prevent the escalation of disputes over the sea. It has largely been bypassed by the claimants since then.

Disputed Isles

Competing territorial claims have led to maritime disputes off the coast of Asia.

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Although analysts and diplomats have widely criticized the 2002 deal as vague and weak, many believe it must be fully implemented as a confidence-building measure before the countries can make serious progress on defusing tensions, including the adoption of a concrete, binding code of conduct to govern the area in the years ahead.
Wednesday's agreement was "a significant and good start for us to work together to continue dialogue and cooperation, with a view to further promote stability and confidence in the region," said Pham Quang Vinh, a Vietnamese foreign ministry official, in remarks to reporters after Wednesday's meetings. A Chinese assistant foreign minister, Liu Zhenmin, called the latest discussions "an important milestone."
Foreign Secretary del Rosario told reporters that the Philippines would go along with the latest deal, but added that it still fell short of a tougher pact needed to settle all of the regions' competing claims. The leaders offered no date for fully implementing the declaration of conduct.
The conciliatory tone among at least some of the participants of Wednesday's meetings—after weeks of barbed exchanges between several of the countries—may signify a desire by China and some Southeast Asian leaders to tone down the issue and show they're working together ahead of the visit by Ms. Clinton, whose appearance at a similar conference a year ago in Hanoi helped trigger the latest round of tensions.
Ms. Clinton called on Asian leaders to resolve their disputes through international legal channels, working hand-in-hand with the 10-member Asean association of Southeast Asian nations. That angered China, which has preferred to negotiate on a bilateral basis with individual claimants without U.S. interference. Ms. Clinton is expected to arrive in Indonesia on Thursday.
China and Southeast Asia have made similar noises about progress in negotiating conduct in the South China Sea before, however, only to abandon them later.
—Eric Bellman contributed to this article.