Philippines - Chinese ships leave vicinity of Pag-Asa

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

http://www.philstar.com/

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