WASHINGTON — The US ambassador to China voiced hope Thursday that the Asian power
was looking to ease tensions in the region after flare-ups in territorial rows
with Southeast Asian nations and Japan.
China's leaders told US Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton during "very good discussions" last week in
Beijing that they wanted to pursue a code of conduct with the ASEAN bloc on the
South China Sea, Ambassador Gary Locke said.
"I've also heard from many
prominent Chinese academics that China would like somehow to return to the
status quo, that they would like to lower the temperature," Locke said at
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington.
Locke said the United States did
not take positions on claims but wanted to make sure that no side "engages
in any type of activity that escalates tensions and jeopardizes safety and
freedom of navigation, which would hurt everybody."
Tensions have soared between
China and Japan over a dispute in the potentially resource-rich East China Sea
as Tokyo announced that it would nationalize islands where rival nationalists
have sailed to stake claims.
In the South China Sea, the
Philippines and Vietnam have accused China of a wave of intimidation against
fishermen and rival nations' ships as Beijing exerts its claims to virtually
all of the strategic waterway.
"It's going to be incumbent
upon China and the Philippines to have their own negotiations on this (and)
China and Vietnam on a bilateral basis," Locke said.
Locke's remarks, made in passing
in response to a question, appeared to take a different emphasis from other
senior US officials who have called on China to negotiate with the full
10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Under a 2002 agreement, China
agreed to reach a code of conduct for the South China Sea with ASEAN but
Beijing has since preferred to deal with each nation individually, instead of
as a unified bloc.
Clinton visited ASEAN's
headquarters in Jakarta to urge unity before her talks in Beijing, where
Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said China wanted the "eventual adoption of a
code of conduct" on the "basis of consensus."
US officials say that a code of
conduct would provide ways to manage disputes and increase dialogue so that
incidents do not turn into full-fledged conflicts in the sea, through which
half of the world's cargo flows.
AFP
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