PHNOM PENH:
Southeast Asian leaders on Wednesday
pledged to step up efforts to resolve overlapping maritime disputes with China,
at the end of a two-day summit which also focused on Myanmar and North Korea.
Leaders
of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
"reaffirmed the importance" of a 10-year-old declaration on the
conduct of the parties (DOC) pledging to promote peace and understanding in the
disputed area.
"We
stressed the need to intensify efforts to ensure the effective and full implementation
of the DOC based on the guidelines for the implementation of the DOC," the
leaders said in a statement at the end of the two-day summit.
China
and several ASEAN countries have rival claims to uninhabited islands in the
sea, which is believed to be rich in hydrocarbons and straddles strategic
shipping lanes vital to global trade.
The
United States claims a "national interest" in keeping the sea open
for trade and has recently stepped up military cooperation with the
Philippines, one of the claimants, as part of its foreign policy
"pivot" to Asia.
China
has competing territorial claims in the sea with ASEAN members Brunei,
Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.
US
naval commanders have repeatedly said they are concerned about minor incidents,
such as recent clashes over fishing rights and energy exploration near the
uninhabited islands, blowing up into major regional conflicts.
Chinese
President Hu Jintao visited Cambodia on the eve of the summit in what many
analysts took to be a form of pressure on Phnom Penh to use its chairmanship to
slow down the South China Sea negotiations.
Philippine
Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said there was a "big disagreement"
on Tuesday over whether to invite China to help draft a code of conduct,
designed to prevent small incidents in the sea from escalating.
Cambodia,
which holds the ASEAN chair in 2012, is eager to bring China into the drafting
process but the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam say the bloc's members should
draft a code among themselves before presenting it to Beijing.
Cambodian
Prime Minister Hun Sen used his closing press conference to angrily reject
reports of a rift over how to proceed in the negotiations with China. He also
denied he had tried to pull the issue off the agenda of the bloc's summit.
"Maybe
some people think that during the ASEAN summit there is a difference of view
between ASEAN and China. That is the wrong thinking," he said, adding that
all parties were committed to peacefully resolving the disputes.
"What
I hate the most is that they talk about Cambodia (being) under the pressure of
China. Cambodia is the chairman of ASEAN and Cambodia has the right to set the
agenda," he said through a translator.
ASEAN
comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam -- a grouping of nearly 600
million people from disparate economic and political systems.
The
leaders also called for restraint over a planned rocket launch by nuclear-armed
North Korea later this month.
"We
urged all parties concerned to exercise self-restraint and not to undertake any
steps which could lead to the escalation of tensions in the Korean
Peninsula," they said in a joint statement.
Pyongyang
sparked alarm in the region when it announced last month it would launch a
rocket to place a satellite in orbit.
The
United States, Japan and other nations say the launch is a disguised ballistic
missile test, and would breach a UN ban on North Korean missile launches.
The
talks have also focused on historic by-elections in Myanmar, formerly known as
Burma, which gave pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi a seat in parliament
for the first time.
The
leaders repeated a call made Tuesday for Western sanctions to be lifted in
light of the elections, which Myanmar President Thein Sein praised as being
"held successfully".
"We
called for the lifting of all sanctions on Myanmar immediately in order to
contribute positively to the democratic process and economic development of
that country," the joint statement said.
Philippine
President Benigno Aquino told reporters: "We have to show the people who
are reforming in Myanmar that the road they chose is the right road. There has
to be a reward."
ASEAN
has often been dismissed as a talking shop but it has assumed new strategic
importance in light of the economic and military rise of China in recent years.
In a
step welcomed by some ASEAN members but which has irked China, the United
States is deploying up to 2,500 Marines to northern Australia. The first
200-odd of the Marines arrived in Darwin on Wednesday.
-
AFP/al
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