Regional tensions flare at Asean summit

Efforts by south-east Asian leaders to agree a united front in their disputes with China have collapsed for a second consecutive summit, highlighting an increasingly assertive stance by Beijing.

Benigno Aquino, the president of the Philippines, dismissed a statement by Cambodia, the chair of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and an important China ally, which said the bloc had agreed not to raise the South China Sea disputes in international forums.

“There were several views expressed yesterday on Asean unity which we did not realise would be translated into an Asean consensus,” Mr Aquino said at a meeting between Japanese and Asean leaders in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, on Monday. “For the record, this was not our understanding. The Asean route is not the only route for us. As a sovereign state, it is our right to defend our national interests.”

China claims almost the entire South China Sea, which contains vast oil and gas reserves, sizeable fish stocks and important global trade routes. The clashes in the South and East China Seas have escalated significantly over the past two years, with Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam accusing Beijing of upsetting regional stability by aggressively claiming disputed territories.

Barack Obama, the US president, is likely to raise the issue of regional maritime security at a meeting of 18 Asia-Pacific leaders that is tacked on to the Asean summits, in a move likely to anger Beijing further.

China has long argued that its disputes with Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam in the South China Sea, and with Japan in the East China Sea, should only be discussed on a bilateral basis.

“From a Chinese perspective, they’re much happier dealing with individual states rather than organisations and some in Beijing see Asean as part of an anti-Chinese conspiracy to limit China,” said Odd Arne Westad, an expert on Chinese foreign policy at the London School of Economics. “But the more pressure China brings to bear, the more likely there will be a backlash leading to increased regional cohesion.”

Diplomats have argued that Asean must present a united front if it is to prevent the region becoming a battlefield for great powers as China rapidly expands its military and becomes more assertive in a region it views as its backyard.

Cambodia, a major recipient of Chinese aid, seems to have shattered regional consensus for the second time during its yearlong rotational chairmanship of Asean.

In a closing statement after Sunday’s meeting, Cambodia said that southeast Asian leaders had agreed “that they would not internationalise the South China Sea from now on”, a move that diplomats said was a clear sop to Beijing.

But the Philippines hit back on Monday, insisting that it reserved the right to raise the issue as and when it saw fit.

At the same time, the Philippines and other southeast Asian nations are eager not to push Beijing too far at a sensitive time, when the Communist party’s leadership transition had just taken place.

A spokesman for Indonesia’s president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said that the strength of the Asean and associated summits was to “put co-operation above the other issues” such as the South China Sea. But he added that countries were free to raise any particular issues of interest, including the maritime disputes.