SBY pushes for solutions, ASEAN ready for China

July 20, 2011, 09.37 AM

ILUSTRASI. Sejumlah pesepak bola tim nasional Indonesia senior berebut bola saat mengikuti latihan di Stadion Madya. ANTARA FOTO/M Risyal Hidayat/wsj.

Reporter: Edy Can | Editor: Edy Can

NUSA DUA. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who opened the 44th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM), is pushing for the 10 members to speed up negotiations for a ruling on the South China Sea as ASEAN produces a common draft on the issue for a discussion with China.

“I ask the foreign ministers’ meeting to step up their efforts to complete that last mile on this important confidence-building document. We need to send a strong signal to the world that the future of the South China Sea is a predictable, manageable and optimistic one,” Yudhoyono said on Tuesday.

Indonesia is the grouping’s current chair.

“And we need to finalize long overdue guidelines, because we need to get moving to the next phase, which is identifying elements of the Code of Conduct [for the South China Sea],” he added.

Later in the evening, the ASEAN foreign ministers concluded their meeting with a joint communique, stressing that they were ready with a draft of guidelines on the implementation of the declaration on the conduct (DOC) of the parties in the South China Sea.

“We look forward to the finalization of the guidelines at the upcoming ASEAN-China senior officials’ meeting [on Wednesday],” the joint communique read.

The meeting of officials from ASEAN and China could likely agree on the guidelines, which according to some officials only included broad measures for the cooperation of countries but not rules to avoid clashes in the area.

The question, however, is whether China and ASEAN can agree on the start of negotiations on the code of conduct (COC), which will specify terms of engagement among parties in the area.

Frequent naval clashes between claimant countries in the South China Sea, especially in the area near the Spratly and the Paracel Islands, have turned the territory into a source of tension in the region. The South China Sea straddles some of the world’s most important trade routes.

Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa told a press conference that while he acknowledged the importance of the COC, the finalization of the guidelines would show that ASEAN and China could move toward a peaceful solution to the problems.

“We can begin negotiation on COC after the finalization of the guidelines or can do both in parallel. The bottom line is that we have development in handling the problems,” he said.

ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan said there was a sense of urgency from both ASEAN and China and the grouping’s dialogue partners, such as the US and Russia, to make the area a peaceful one and managed effectively under stability and security, with freedom of navigation.

“There’s a new sense of urgency in the region and from around the world because ASEAN has become so important, so critical to the global community, whether it is in economic development, economic recovery or the global interest for peace and security,” he said. (Abdul Khalik and Mustaqim Adamrah/ The Jakarta Post)