PALACE SHRUGS OFF PROTESTS AS PART OF DIPLOMACY

China summons RP envoy amid rising sea tension

By Riza Recio

03/16/2009

The Philippines has figured right in the middle of a rising tension in the South China Sea between the United States and China as a naval face-off between the two countries happened closely after the signing of Baseline law that the Chinese government protested vehemently.

China’s official state news agency Xinhua said China’s Assistant Foreign Minister Hu Zhengyue had summoned the Philippine Ambassador to China Sonia Brady to lodge stern representation on signing of the 2009 Baseline Bill by President Arroyo about the sovereignty of islands in the South China Sea.

Tensions rose in the area after the United States sent destroyers to international waters off southern China to protect a naval surveillance patrol that was involved in a stand-off with Chinese vessels.

China, in turn, dispatched its most modern patrol ship. The Beijing News said the vessel would conduct patrols of what it called China’s exclusive maritime zone in the disputed waters surrounding the Paracel and Spratly Islands.

Newsly appointed Chinese Ambassador to the Philippines Liu Jianchao also lodged stern representation to Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo on the same issue.

The Palace downplayed the China and lately Vietnam protests over the Baseline law saying it was but part of the normal conduct of diplomacy.

Press Secretary Cerge Remonde said the signing into law of the Baseline law is “first and foremost for the President and the government to abide to the Constitution upholding the sovereignty of country on these islands.”

The United Nations Convention On The Laws Of The Seas (UNCLOS) has given its deadline and it was for the government to meet a May 13 deadline, he said.

The Baseline law defined the country’s extended continental shelf and for which the UNCLOS will be acting as the final arbiter on claims being sought on maritime territories, Remonde said.

“UNCLOS will be the final arbiter of this issue,” he said reacting to the recent protests made by China and Vietnam on the Baseline Law.

Remonde said that the reaction of each country has been expected “in the same manner” that the Philippine government will also engage into this action as part of its diplomatic conduct.

Hu reaffirmed China’s principle and stance on the issue of South China Sea, emphasizing that the claim to territorial sovereignty over Huangyan Island and Nansha Islands, which are together the disputed Spratlys, by any other country is illegal and invalid.

China asked the Philippines to abide by its commitment and immediately stop all the activities that infringe upon China’s sovereignty rights and complicate and magnify the South China Sea disputes, Hu said.

The 2009 baseline bill was passed by both chambers of the Philippine Congress last month and has drawn strong protests from China.

Upon the bill’s passage through the Congress, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Wang Guangya summoned the Charge d’affaires of the Philippine embassy in China, Maria Barber, to lodge a stern protest.

China said its converted naval rescue ship would aid Chinese fishing boats and transport vessels.

China claimed the US patrol vessels were within its 200-kilometre (125-mile) economic exclusive zone, but the United States has insisted they were in international waters.

The Spratly and Paracel island chains have been flashpoints for years.

The Spratlys are claimed in full or part by China and Vietnam as well as the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan, and the Paracels are claimed by China, which now occupies them, as well as by Vietnam and Taiwan.

The baseline bill of the Philippines extends to cover more than 50 islets, shoals, and reefs of China’s Nansha Islands, known as the Kalayaan Island Group by Manila, according to Xinhua.

The islands are declared as belonging and subject to the sovereignty of the Philippines under Presidential Decree 1596, a unilateral order issued by late president Ferdinand Marcos in 1978 to claim sovereignty over the islands by geological proximity and “historic records,” according to the baseline bill.

Hinhua, however, said official maps sanctioned by the Philippine authority had only started to include the islands in the late 1970s and it was not until 10 years ago that “updated” maps with Nansha Islands within the Philippine territorial limits started to be widely circulated in the Philippines.

However, the latest Political Map of the Philippines available in bookstores, certified by the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority, clearly placed Huangyan Island outside the Philippine territorial limits, it added. AFP

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