Asean foreign ministers face challenge to reach consensus after South China Sea ruling

The topic is expected to dominate the 49th Asean Foreign Ministers Meeting until it ends on Tuesday.

This is the first ministerial gathering of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations since the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) ruled on July 12 in favour of the Philippines and said that China’s nine-dash territorial claim to the South China Sea was ill-founded. 

A few days after the judgement, the group gave up on an attempt to issue a joint statement on the PCA verdict as some members support China.

Senior Asean officials meeting in Vientiane have struggled to reach a collective viewpoint for the annual joint communique to be issued at the conclusion of the event.

The problem is some governments such as Cambodia have announced their positions on the PCA judgement, so it is difficult for them compromise, one senior official |said.

Several members of the regional grouping have been at loggerheads with China over the territorial dis-pute for a long time. Tensions have risen over the past few years as Beijing claimed it had authority in the South China Sea and erected facilities that can be used for military purposes.

The Philippines took a case to the PCA in 2013 and the court’s ruling covered key elements. It said there was no historical ground for the |nine-dash line, and that China’s |artificial reefs and fishing activities |in the sea violate the Philippines’ rights and that China’s activities |in the sea damaged the environ-ment.

While China rejected the judgement, the Philippines and other Asean members including Vietnam and Malaysia want the verdict to be binding practice for how the South China Sea is governed.

“Basically, Asean members want the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea – UNCLOS – to be upheld as a rule-based practice in the region,” a senior official said on condition of anonymity.

The Asean foreign ministers meet today and will meet with officials from other nations including China and the US on Monday and Tuesday in a bid to find a solution to the issue and maintain Asean’s relevancy, the official said.

Laos, which holds the current chairmanship of Asean but is seen as having a strong connection to Beijing, has pushed hard to achieve relevant outcomes at the meeting, the official said.

Laos and Cambodia were blamed for the diplomatic disarray that resulted from the retraction of a joint Asean statement on the South China Sea after a meeting with China in Kunming last month.

The special meeting of Asean and Chinese foreign ministers was dominated by the controversial issue and was labelled a “diplomatic fiasco”. 

Asean ministers retracted the joint statement that expressed concern over China’s construction of artificial islands in the sea after a consensus was not reached.

In 2012, Asean, under the chairmanship of Cambodia, failed for the first time in its history to issue a joint communique after a foreign ministers meeting due to differences over the South China Sea.