Asean urges ‘hotline’ with China over sea row

PHNOM PENH—Southeast Asian nations will propose opening a “hotline” with China aimed at defusing tensions over the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea), Asean’s chief said Saturday.

Surin Pitsuwan, secretary-general of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations, said after a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers that they had agreed to back the plan first mooted by Indonesia.

“This of course will be brought up to our Chinese friends,” Surin told reporters ahead of a gathering of leaders from the region that begins in Cambodia on Sunday.

“We can call it a red line, we can give it a sense of urgency that if there is anything developing that we all will be phoned… trying to consult, trying to coordinate, trying to contain any possible spillover of any… incident, accident, miscalculation, misunderstanding,” he added.

ASEAN members Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei, as well as Taiwan, have claims to parts of the sea, home of some of the world’s most important shipping lanes and believed to be rich in fossil fuels.

China insists it has sovereign rights to virtually all of the sea, and the Philippines and Vietnam have expressed concerns that their giant Asian neighbour has become increasingly aggressive this year in staking its claim.

Philippine and Chinese vessels engaged in a standoff at a remote shoal in the sea in April, escalating the dispute between their countries dramatically.

The proposal comes as Asean and China struggle to make progress on a code of conduct (COC) to ease tensions in the sea that was first envisaged a decade ago.

“What Indonesia is now looking for while we are working on the COC is a commitment on the part of Asean and China to open a hotline of communication,” Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa told reporters in Phnom Penh.

“So that if there were to be an incident in the future… we can commit to have communication and have dialogue if there were to be disputes.”

Asean leaders will hold their annual summit in Phnom Penh on Sunday. This will be followed by a two-day East Asia Summit involving Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, US President Barack Obama and the leaders of six other countries.