China and Asean progress South China Sea pact talks

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PROGRESS has been made on a South China Sea pact but decades of negotiations won’t be concluded this year as agreed, three regional diplomats said today.

China and the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) began negotiating the so-called “code of conduct” in 2005 to prevent occasional confrontations in the disputed waters from turning into a major conflict that could threaten Asia’s economies.

The accord mainly calls for self-restraint and discourages aggressive acts that could spark clashes in the waterway that is a key global trade route.

After years of closed-door negotiations, which at times were delayed due to tense clashes in the contested waters, China and Asean agreed in 2023 to speed up the negotiations and conclude the talks by this year.

Three senior regional diplomats said that after the final round of this year’s talks last month, China and the Asean have provisionally agreed on about 80 per cent of all the paragraphs that will be included in the agreement.

The last major sticking points are the geographic scope to be covered by the agreement, the definition of sensitive terms and whether the accord should be legally binding or not, according to the three diplomats.

They spoke on condition of anonymity and without elaborating because they were not authorised to discuss the issues in public.

Negotiations will have to continue next year, when Asean’s leadership rotates to Singapore.

The Philippines, which led the bloc this year, initiated more meetings, at least once a month, which effectively provided more time for negotiators to try to resolve issues, the sources said.

China and Malaysia, which currently oversees Asean’s overall relations with Beijing, jointly led at least 10 major rounds of negotiations this year.

The status of the negotiations on the proposed agreement, as well as continuing incidents in the South China Sea, will be high on the agenda when Asean leaders hold an annual summit in Manila starting this weekend.

They will engage with leaders of Asian and Western nations, including the United States and China, after their meeting.

China and four of Asean member states, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, along with Taiwan have been locked in decades-long territorial standoffs in the busy waterway, which is also believed to be sitting atop undersea deposits of oil and gas.

Confrontations have escalated particularly between Chinese and Philippine coast guard and naval forces in disputed shoals in recent years. 

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