Indonesia has welcomed moves by the Philippines and China to withdraw ships at a disputed shoal in the South China Sea.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa, in a statement posted on Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry website Wednesday, said the moves by Manila and Beijing to pull out ships and fishing vessels in the Scarborough Shoal off northwestern Philippines “contribute positively to the easing of tensions between the two countries.”
Natalegawa said Indonesia has urged both countries “to refrain from further escalating tensions, and instead to promote peaceful settlement by diplomatic means.”
Indonesia also called for the adherence of both sides to a non-binding code of conduct in the South China Sea.
He also urged China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional bloc where Indonesia, the Philippines and three other South China Sea claimants are members, to move towards the drafting of a legally binding code of conduct in the area.
On June 5, President Benigno S. Aquino III ordered the two Philippine government vessels locked in a more than two-month territorial standoff with China to return to port due to bad weather.
Two days later, China followed suit, saying its plans to pull out its fishing boats from the shoal to protect its fishermen from a brewing storm. Chinese vessels are still in the shoal’s premises.
President Aquino said the Philippines will send back its ships to the shoal once weather clears and if foreign ships won’t leave the area.
“We will have a flight that will determine whether or not there is still a need (to deploy ships). Now, if there’s a presence in our territorial waters then we will redeploy,” Aquino told reporters.
The standoff erupted on April 10 when China’s government ships prevented Philippine authorities from arresting Chinese fishermen poaching in the shoal, a ring-shaped coral reef with rocky outcrops surrounding a sprawling lagoon abundant with marine life.
Both the Philippines and China claim ownership to the shoal. Scarborough is called Panatag or Bajo de Masinloc by the Philippines and Huangyan Island by China.
The shoal is located 124 nautical miles from Zambales as against 472 nautical miles from China’s nearest coastal province of Hainan. It also falls within the Philippines’ 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) as provided by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, of which Manila and Beijing are signatories.
Even before the incident, Manila has repeatedly accused Beijing of intruding into its territorial waters, disrupting its oil exploration and harassing its fishermen.
China also claims the South China Sea nearly in its entirety, including areas that overlap with the Philippines' and other Asian nations’ territorial waters.
The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, China and Taiwan all have competing claims over the resource-rich sea, an area teeming with rich maritime resources and said to be harboring vast oil and mineral deposits. -Philippine News Agency (June 21, 2012 12:45PM)
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