Aquino in Burma not to pick fight with China

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (right) Philippine President Benigno Aquino III (left) and Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong (center) walk back to their seats after posing for a group photo during the 12th Asean-India summit at the Myanmar International Convention Center in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2014. Aquino flew to Myanmar on Tuesday night determined to press the Philippines’ claim to its part of the South China Sea but not to pick a fight with China. AP PHOTO/GEMUNU AMARASINGHE

BEIJING—President Aquino flew to Burma (Myanmar) on Tuesday night determined to press the Philippines’ claim to its part of the South China Sea but not to pick a fight with China.

Fresh from a brief talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping, host of this year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) Leaders’ Meeting, Aquino said the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) had never prevented the Philippines from “saying our piece in our meetings.”

Apart from meeting with 10 leaders of Asean at the two-day summit in the Burmese capital Naypwidaw, Aquino will also meet with leaders of security allies Japan and Australia and is expected to raise the Philippines’ territorial dispute with China in the West Philippine Sea in their bilateral discussions.

Aquino did raise the dispute with leaders of Thailand, Papua New Guinea, Canada, Vietnam and New Zealand with whom he had bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the just-concluded Apec summit here.

High-level dialogue

“We’re not going to a meeting looking for a fight with anybody. But we do have advocacies and we will push for our advocacies. And it’s not in relation to: Will somebody support us? Will somebody fight us? We are advocating a certain position because we think that is right and we will do it even if we’re alone,” the President said in an interview with Reuters here on Tuesday night, a transcript of which was released to Filipino reporters.

President Aquino made it clear that his administration did not want to focus its relations with China “on the disputes” as he welcomed the “start of a very high-level dialogue” between the two countries.

Aquino admitted that his meeting with Xi here was “at least” the start of the Philippines’ reconciliation with China after their relations turned icy when Manila took Beijing to the United Nations arbitration tribunal last year to protest China’s claim to 90 percent of the 3.5-million-square-kilometer South China Sea, including waters close to its smaller neighbors’ shores.

‘Meeting of minds’

“I think we have a meeting of minds. But again the details of how to actually [do] this is something that will have to be tasked to perhaps other levels [on] both sides,” he said.

“We will cooperate as long as it doesn’t, again, [impinge] on our principles and our rights and we would want, you know, we share with them, hopefully the same goal of arriving at a settlement of these tensions and preventing any future tensions from happening, especially on the same subjects,” President Aquino said.

Asked how both nations can resolve their dispute in the West Philippine Sea—parts of the South China Sea within the Philippines’ 370-km exclusive economic zone—he reiterated his hope that China shared the Philippines’ objective to improve the “economic lot” of their people.

For this to happen, the President said, there must be stability in the region to ensure economic growth.