PBBM pressures South China Sea claimants, other ASEAN neighbors for conclusion of code of conduct
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia—A Code of Conduct (COC) in the South China Sea must be concluded as soon as possible.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. made the call on Friday during the 40th and 41st Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit and Related Summits here as he faced his fellow state leaders, particularly those from countries that are also claiming parts of the contested waters.
Claimants over parts of the South China Sea are the Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam as well as neighboring Taiwan and China.
In his intervention speech for the 25th ASEAN-China Summit, President Marcos said the immediate conclusion of the COC has become more relevant now as countries involved mark 40 and 20 years of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea (DOC), respectively.
“It shall be an example of how states manage their differences: through reason and through right. I, therefore, welcome the progress on textual negotiations on the COC this past year and hopefully an approved code of conduct in the very near future,” he said.
Currently, there are only little developments in the crafting of COC two decades since ASEAN members made attempts to draft such a code.
The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) recently said there was some sort of agreement among ASEAN members, particularly on what to do during certain situations in the contested water.
Marcos was expected to tackle the South China Sea issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping if he met him here.
But China was only represented by Premier Li Keqiang in the summit.