Negotiations on the Code of Conduct for the South China Sea will resume next week in Jakarta, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said Saturday.
This development came as Indonesia, chair of this year's 10-member ASEAN, confirmed that talks over the disputed water would be intensified this year following a meeting between Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi and his Chinese counterpart, Qin Gang.
According to DFA, the meeting will take place on March 8 and 9. It will be the 38th meeting of the Joint Working Group and will be held at the ASEAN Secretariat, it added.
The last round of talks on the COC happened in Cambodia in October 2022.
"The meeting will continue the negotiation and deliberation on the single negotiated text of the COC," Ma. Teresita Daza, DFA spokesperson, said, adding "the JWG will be deliberating on the same text on the general provisions."
Four ASEAN members—namely, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei—have claims over parts of the South China Sea. Meanwhile, Indonesia clashes with China over fishing rights in Natuna Islands, located in the southern part of the disputed water.
During the ASEAN-China Summit in Cambodia in November 2022, President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. pressured claimants of the South China Sea to immediately come up with a COC two decades after the attempt to create one started.
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.