Manila, Philippines - Only two of the 20 Chinese fishing vessels that dropped anchor the
other day very close to the Philippine-occupied Pag-Asa island in the Spratlys
region remain in the area, according to the military’s Western Command
(Wescom).
Wescom spokesman Lt. Col. Niel Estrella said
yesterday’s maritime air surveillance over Pag-Asa island showed that most of
the Chinese fishing vessels were no longer around.
“Except for the two remaining Chinese ships
which we also monitored to be leaving the area, the rest of the Chinese fishing
boats are gone,” Estrella said.
On Friday, the Chinese fishing flotilla
composed of 20 ships were spotted to be only around five kilometers from
Pag-Asa Island, right in the very area where bigger Chinese ships were
previously spotted harvesting corals.
Because of this, Muntinlupa Rep. Rodolfo
Biazon, former chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, suggested
that the Philippines ask the United Nations for a peacekeeping force to prevent
armed confrontations between Manila and Beijing over their conflicting claims
in the West Philippine Sea.
But Malacañang and the Department of Foreign
Affairs (DFA) rejected the suggestion, preferring to stick to diplomatic,
political and legal tacks in finding a solution to the territorial dispute with
China.
Estrella said that despite bad weather,
Wescom is continuously monitoring significant developments within the
territorial waters of the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG) in the hotly-contested
Spratly archipelago.
Tension mounted in the region with China’s
recent creation of a military commission in its newly-formed prefecture Sansha
City based in Woody Island in the Paracels, a group of islands which Vietnam
claims as an integral part of its maritime domain.
In what security observers described as a
bold step to press ownership of the entire South China Sea, China has
established and fortified its military position in the Spratlys region.
This triggered other claimant countries,
except the Philippines, to also increase their defenses in their occupied
islets and reefs in the Spratlys region.
Vietnam, whose occupied islets and reefs are
very close to of China, has already improved its fighting capabilities while
Taiwan has announced that it is deploying long-range guns in its occupied Itu
Aba island.
Except for Brunei, all the claimant countries
– China, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Philippines – in the Spratlys
archipelago have forward troops deployed in the area.
Tension
‘dramatically escalating’
As this developed, the Washington-bases
think-tank Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) said the tensions in the South
China Sea have risen to their highest level after the disastrous breakup of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers meeting in
Phnom Penh and the dispute “now increasingly threatens to turn into a shooting
war.
The CFR said tensions in the West Philippine
Sea go back decades but have escalated dramatically over the past two years.
China, which claims the sea almost entirely
as its own, and countries with overlapping claims have turned virtually uninhabited
rocks into new provinces and states, said Joshua Kurlantzick, a CFR fellow for
Southeast Asia in an article dated July 27 in the council’s website.
More than at any other time, the dispute this
year has also done serious damage to ASEAN’s claims to be able to handle
important regional issues and in the future drive regional integration, the
article said.
Regional partners of the United States like
the Philippines are rapidly buying up arms, while at the same time, China and
most of the Southeast Asian claimants of portions of the sea (Vietnam, the
Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan) are ramping up rhetoric about their
claims and increasingly sending naval and “civilian” fishing boats into the sea
to test adversaries’ positions, it added.
The Obama administration also has upped its
assistance to mainland Southeast Asia and more vocally backed the ASEAN
claimants’ rights on territorial claims, saying freedom of navigation and a
resolution of claims accepted by all nations is a US “national interest.”
The South China Sea is strategically vital
and believed to contain rich deposits of petroleum and natural gas.
Mike Hammer, Assistant Secretary of State for
Public Affairs, reaffirmed the US stand on the South China Sea issue at a press
conference in Washington DC on Thursday.
“We call on all claimants to clarify and
pursue their claims in accordance with international law, including as
reflected in the Law of the Sea Convention,” he said.
“We support a collaborative, diplomatic
process by all claimants to resolve these disputes, and we are concerned about
unilateral actions.”
Avoiding
conflict
For the United States, avoiding conflict in
the sea would help prevent the overstretch of the military, which does not want
to take on the role of policing the South China Sea, while also giving
Washington time to help upgrade forces and to foster greater unity among ASEAN
members on the issue, it said.
Additionally, ASEAN nations could go to the
International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) and solicit an opinion on
the disputed claims, which might help make its position stronger.
The Philippines had invited China to join
Manila to proceed to the ITLOS for a legal and lasting solution instead of a
diplomatic solution but Beijing formally rejected the invitation.
Although diplomatic means should continue,
Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto del Rosario said it is necessary to pursue a
legal track by proceeding to the ITLOS where the Philippines and China will
validate their claims and defend their respective position.
China maintained that the Panatag Shoal
dispute should be resolved through “friendly” consultations, contrary to the
Philippines’ strong position to submit the claims and defend their position
before a United Nations-backed tribunal.
Chinese embassy spokesman Zhang Hua urged the
Philippines not to aggravate the incident but he stressed commitment to settle
the dispute through friendly consultation.
Malacañang, on the other hand, said it would
be up to China to answer criticisms from the United States on Beijing’s plan to
put up a military garrison on an island in the contested West Philippine Sea
and said all claimants should resolve their disputes through diplomacy.
“We do not know how our friends in China will
take that. Again, we will not comment on the statements of the United States in
reference to the plans of the Chinese, because as you know we have our own
position on this,” presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte said over radio
dzRB.
Valte said the Philippines had always been
committed to a peaceful resolution of the dispute and there seemed to be “good
results” from ongoing negotiations.
US State Department spokesperson Victoria
Nuland told reporters on Thursday that America was pressing all parties to work
on a code of conduct for the West Philippine Sea, according to an AP report
from Washington.
Asked about China’s plans, Nuland said the
United States was concerned by “unilateral moves.”
“There’s a concern here that they are
beginning to take actions when we want to see all of these issues resolved at
the table,” she said.
Jaime Laude
Pia Lee-Brago, Jose Katigbak, Aurea Calica,
Teddy Molina
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