CHINA scored a diplomatic victory as Southeast Asian nations dropped a US-backed proposal to mention a landmark international court ruling against Beijing's territorial claims in the South China Sea in a joint statement, Reuters reports.
Philippines pulls US-backed mention of Hague ruling in ASEAN communique CHINA scored a diplomatic victory as Southeast Asian nations dropped a US-backed proposal to mention a landmark international court ruling against Beijing's territorial claims in the South China Sea in a joint statement, Reuters reports. But then China and ASEAN then released a separate joint communique on implementing the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea. It also underlined their pledge to respect freedom of navigation and to peacefully solve territorial disputes through negotiation. A weekend deadlock between Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers was broken only when the Philippines withdrew its request to mention the ruling in the face of resolute objections from Cambodia, China's closest ASEAN ally. China publicly thanked Phnom Penh for the support, which threw the regional bloc's meeting in the Laos capital of Vientiane into disarray. The United States had earlier on Monday urged ASEAN to make a reference to the July 12 ruling by the UN-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration. China and ASEAN members also agreed to avoid basing people on now-uninhabited islands and reefs in the disputed South China Sea, as the bloc made its first official joint statement on the waters since an international tribunal ruling this month. According to Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, ASEAN joint communique expressed serious concerns over land reclamation and "escalations of activities in the area", but did not directly challenge China nor mention the ruling.
