A Southeast Asian nation that in 2012 torpedoed a regional leaders’ statement on the South China Sea now says those countries would not take sides in the disputes with China over the waterway.
“ASEAN tries to keep centrality,” Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Tea Banh’s assistant, Vuth Reth, said on Sunday.
“We don’t say we tend to this side or that side,” Reth said in an interview on the sidelines of the Shangri-La security dialogue in Singapore.
Reth’s comments come as a Hague arbitration tribunal is expected to rule within weeks on a Philippine challenge to China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.
China, ASEAN’s biggest trading partner, contests more than 80 percent of the waterway, and has built some military infrastructure and reclaimed 1,200 hectares of land in the past few years. ASEAN countries including Vietnam and the Philippines have overlapping claims in the area, through which more than US$5 trillion in seaborne trade passes every year.
“Everything moves along and everyone agrees with what is the result,” Reth said. “Peace and prosperity will follow with that.”
ASEAN works as a bloc on the basis of consensus and has yet to establish a code of conduct with China for the South China Sea.
Indeed in 2012, ASEAN failed to reach common ground on the South China Sea issue, ending a regional conference without a joint statement — the first in its 45-year history. Cambodia held the rotating chair of ASEAN that year.
After the meeting collapsed, Cambodia denied it had fallen prey to pressure from China to avoid raising the issue in the statement. China had warned nations beforehand not to mention the territorial spats.
Chinese Admiral Sun Jianguo (孫建國) said at the forum in Singapore on Sunday that territorial disputes have not impeded freedom of navigation in the waterway. The US has been conducting freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, with the US Navy sailing ships near reefs claimed by countries including China.
“How can other people rather than your own homeowner play around in your house, if I may say,” Reth said of the China-US tensions. “It’s like a thief.”
A reporter asked who the thief is.
“I know and you know,” Reth said, laughing.
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