ASEAN to Hold South China Sea’s Code of Conduct Talks Next Week
Jakarta. ASEAN’s foreign ministers are set to gather again in Jakarta next week to discuss, among others, the pending code of conduct, or the COC, on the hotly contested South China Sea.
The talks are part of the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting/Post-Ministerial Conference (AMM/PMC), which is slated for July 11-14 in Jakarta. The high-profile gathering is also expected to see attendance from Chinese senior diplomat Qin Gang along with his counterparts from the regional grouping’s dialogue partners.
“[The AMM/PMC] will work on completing the guidelines aimed to speed up the COC negotiations on the South China Sea,” Foreign Affairs Minister Retno Marsudi told a press conference in Jakarta on Monday.
Sidharto Suryodipuro, the ministry’s director-general for ASEAN cooperation, also told the same conference that Indonesia as ASEAN chair has done its job to accelerate the COC talks with the negotiating parties including China and ASEAN members.
"We are optimistic that we can speed up the discussions,” Sidharto said.
China as well as four ASEAN members -- Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam -- have all laid overlapping claims to the South China Sea, which has some of the world's busiest maritime waterways and is abundant in resources.
In 1992, the Southeast Asian bloc issued a declaration that called for a peaceful dispute resolution in the South China Sea. A decade later, China and ASEAN issued a non-binding declaration of conduct (DOC) to prevent conflict risks in the economically important waterway. The DOC also called for the adoption of a code of conduct, which remains under negotiation to this day. During Qin Gang’s official visit to Jakarta earlier this year, China pledged to accelerate the COC talks.
“Both Indonesia and China as the littoral states to the South China Sea will work with other ASEAN countries to fully and effectively implement the DOC,” Qin Gang said at that time while adding that China sees ASEAN as a priority in its "neighborhood diplomacy".
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