Indonesia has insisted that Asean will continue to push for the issuance of a statement on the South China Sea acceptable to all of its member states, following the move by Cambodia to block a consensus statement on how to counter China’s territorial expansion in the region.
The foreign ministers of 10 countries that make up Asean deliberated for several hours during three sessions, including over lunch, but remained deadlocked because Cambodia did not want China to be criticised, diplomats said.
“It’s really a loyalist of the big country C,” a diplomat who attended closed-door meetings said as quoted by the Associated Press, referring to China.
Earlier this month, an international tribunal in the Hague ruled against China’s expansive claims in the disputed shipping corridor, prompting the East Asian giant to put pressure on Asean and pull favours from countries highly dependent on aid and investment from Beijing.
Just two weeks after the ruling by the UN-sanctioned Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), the region’s top diplomats joined the 49th Asean Foreign Ministers Meeting (AMM) in Vientiane, Laos.
The foreign ministers were expected to talk about terrorism, the economy, climate change, security, the impact of Brexit and other issues. But all this has been overshadowed by the Hague-based tribunal ruling.
Asean prides itself on consensus diplomacy, only issuing joint statements if all member states agree to them. A failure to do so will most likely damage the organisation’s reputation and relevance.
Negotiators from Asean member countries, who have been working to hammer out a joint communique since Wednesday, are still seeking common ground on the few contentious points to be made in the statement, Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi said on Sunday.
“We have the time to do our very best [to reach a consensus on the joint communique],” she said.
Members of the Indonesian delegation had contributed to the efforts to bring unity to all Asean member states in a language that was acceptable to all parties, the minister said, signaling the possibility of a watered-down communique.
“I don’t think any Asean member states want this year’s AMM to fail to issue a joint communique, so Indonesia has continued to build on the positive spirit in order that we can achieve common ground,” Retno said.
Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the matter with the media, said the draft communique to be issued by the ministers left blank spaces under the heading “South China Sea” until a consensus could be reached.
“I think Asean and China have a wider picture than the South China Sea, and we will be working for the issuance of the joint communique,” Aung Lynn, the director general of Myanmar’s Asean Affairs Department, told reporters.
Diplomats in the meeting were determined to avoid a replay of the 2012 debacle, when for the first time in its 49-year history the bloc failed to issue a joint statement for a regional foreign ministers meeting.
Indonesia gathered all of Asean’s top delegates on Saturday night for an informal retreat after attending a welcoming dinner hosted by Laos Foreign Minister Saleumxay Kommasith at the Lao Plaza hotel.
The gathering was meant to boost camaraderie among Asean members ahead of the AMM plenary the following day. But many also considered the meeting to be an attempt to wean Cambodia off Chinese influence.
Cambodia is heavily dependent on Chinese aid and investment. Last week, Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen announced China would give his government around US$600 million in soft loans.
Even before the ruling on the South China Sea, Hun Sen — a close ally of Beijing — said that he would flatly reject any decision by the tribunal on China’s claims in the South China Sea.
This was further reinforced when the country shot down attempts to insert strong language into the negotiated text, pushing to strike out any reference to the militarisation of the South China Sea in this year’s meeting.
Laos, which is also a Chinese ally, has been careful not to take sides because of its position as the host, but it supports Cambodia’s veto.
Retno claimed that the informal meeting had managed to cool the situation, allowing for the resumption of negotiations into the third day of meetings, when Asean is set to host China in the first of 10 Post Ministerial Conferences (PMCs).
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who will attend the meeting on Monday, reiterated his government’s position that it will only accept bilateral negotiations.
“Every country has the same position as China, that is that we should fully and effectively implement the regional Code of Conduct [CoC], and in that CoC it clearly states the dispute should be resolved by peaceful, sit-down talks between the parties directly concerned,” he said as quoted by the Associated Press.
Indonesia has insisted that Asean will continue to push for the issuance of a statement on the South China Sea acceptable to all of its member states, following the move by Cambodia to block a consensus statement on how to counter China’s territorial expansion in the region.
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