Tensions over competing claims in the West Philippine Sea (South China
Sea) could escalate into conflict, with an arms buildup among rival nations
raising the temperature, an international think tank warned Tuesday.
Prospects of solving the disputes
"seem to be diminishing" after a recent failure by the 10-country
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) to hammer out a "code of
conduct" that would govern actions in the sea, the International Crisis
Group (ICG) said.
"Without a consensus on a
resolution mechanism, tensions in the [West Philippine Sea] can easily spill
over into armed conflict," warned Paul Quinn-Judge, the ICG's program
director for Asia.
"As long as Asean fails to
produce a cohesive [West Philippine Sea] policy, a binding set of rules on the
handling of disputed claims cannot be enforced."
China claims sovereignty over nearly
all of the sea, which is believed to hold vast amounts of oil and gas, is one
of the region's most important fishing grounds and is home to shipping lanes
that are vital to global trade.
The Philippines and fellow Asean
members Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam, as well as Taiwan, claim parts of the
sea.
The rival claims have for decades
made the area one of the region's potential military flash points, with Vietnam
and China engaging in sea conflicts in 1974 and 1998 that left dozens of
military personnel dead.
Tensions began to escalate again
last year with Vietnam and the Philippines accusing China of becoming
increasingly aggressive in staking its claims to the sea.
In April, Philippine and Chinese
vessels became engaged in a tense standoff at Panatag Shoal (Scarborough
Shoal), a horseshoe-shaped formation of rocks and corals within the
Philippines' exclusive economic zone.
And China this week triggered
further anger from around the region when it announced it was planning to build
a military garrison on the Woody Reef in the Paracel Islands.
On the diplomatic front, an
annual meeting of Asean foreign ministers ended in disarray early this month
when it failed to agree on a joint statement, a first in its 45-year history,
because of divisions over the West Philippine Sea disputes.
Meeting host Cambodia was widely
seen to have backed China, a close ally. This derailed a campaign by the
Philippines for a tough Asean position against China.
The Brussels-based ICG said in
its report yesterday that China had "worked actively to exploit" the
divisions in Asean by offering preferential treatment to members of the bloc
that supported its position in the dispute.
"A lack of unity among
China's rival claimants, coupled with the weakness of the regional multilateral
framework, has hampered the search for a solution," the report said.
"All of the trends are in
the wrong direction, and prospects of resolutions are diminishing."
The report also noted that China
and the rival claimants had continued to expand their Navies and Coast Guards
amid the dispute, due in part to domestic political pressures and rising
nationalism among its citizens.
This could lead to an "escalation"
of incidents, including more maritime standoffs, it said.
The ICG said the best way to ease
the tensions would be for the rival claimants to agree on ways to share the
natural resources on offer in the West Philippine Sea.
But it noted that the last effort
to do so-a joint seismic survey by China, Vietnam and the Philippines-broke
down in 2008, and the prospects of cooperation in the future were low.
AFP
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