PHNOM PENH, July 12 -- (Kyodo) Cambodia decided Thursday to put off the release of a joint communique on the ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting held Monday due to a lack of consensus on wording relating to the South China Sea issue, conference sources said.
Vietnam and the Philippines have demanded that ASEAN adopt strong language to reflect their positions in territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea, leaving the 10-member grouping unable to adopt the communique, Cambodian diplomatic sources said.
One Cambodian diplomatic source described the positions taken by Vietnamese and Philippine officials as "bullying."
Vietnam has insisted that the communique includes a reference to "the maritime boundary of exclusive economic zone and continental shelves disputes between the Philippines, Vietnam and China," while the Philippines wants the mention of "Scarborough Shoal" in the document, Cambodian diplomatic sources said.
Cambodia, as chair of the ASEAN meetings and a close friend of China, is not happy with the demands put up by Vietnam and the Philippines, the sources said.
The sources said Cambodia has warned that if the deadlock continues, the joint communique that is usually released soon after the annual meeting would be scrapped altogether.
The controversy over the language in the communique for the ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting spilled over to a meeting between the Chinese and ASEAN foreign ministers on Wednesday.
Speaking at the meeting, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said "some ASEAN member states have taken unilateral provocative action on the issues of South China Sea," diplomatic sources said.
Yang effectively put on hold an agreement reached earlier by senior ASEAN and Chinese officials to open negotiations for a legally binding "code of conduct" in the South China Sea, saying the talks would have to wait until "the condition is ripe," the sources said.
The Scarborough Shoal was the scene of a standoff between Chinese and Philippine government vessels earlier this year. Both the Philippines and China claim sovereignty over the shoal.
Vietnam, which disputes China's claims to the Spratly and Paracel island groups, has decried recent Chinese "patrolling" of the contested seas and a recent announcement by the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corp. that it will invite international bids for oil and gas exploration in an area of the Paracels.
3 comments:
Cambodian government did the right thing in support of Chinese position in the south China Sea. If there is conflict of interest i between 2 countries, they should bilaterally resolve the problems instead of internationalizing it. Beside, Vietnam is now an imperialist, it forced Cambodian government to accept many unequal treaties that should have cancelled or annulled based on the 1991 Paris Peace Agreement. The so called BOrder Alignment is the Vietnamese fabrication to annex more Cambodian land and maritime territories. We hope that China will teach Vietnam another lession, because it listen only the language of force.
It is naive to think that America will come to the Vietnamese's help in case of conflict, since USA have their own problems and they think about their own interest first. In addition China is the biggest tradding partner of USA and big creditor of the US government.
what's wrong with the vietnamese/youn and the filipino with their heavy english accent? the filipino have heavil "d" accent all the time when they speak in english and viet/youn english accent was like a broken record, you know. i like khmer english accent better, we speak more clearly and intellectually, you know. anyway, asean meeting shouldn't be all about viet/youn and filipino demand to steal from china's islands and water territories, you know. leave china alone, ok! china is way bigger than viet/youn country and population even combined with philipino, really!
I am really surprised as to why Cambodia agrees to host this South China Sea code of conduct meting. America came to the meeting thinking this is a forrum to gang up on china. Vietnam and Philipines want to use this meeting to trash out at China and claim Spratley and Paracells islands. This is a big fight that Cambodia should stay out.
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