Balikpapan talks aim to ease tension in S. China Sea

Balikpapan talks aim to ease tension in S. China Sea

JAKARTA (JP): Senior government officials and experts from 11
countries will meet in the East Kalimantan city of Balikpapan
next week to hammer out cooperation programs concerning the
geographically strategic South China Sea.

The Workshop on Managing Potential Conflicts in the South
China Sea, planned for Oct. 9-13, will pick up where they left in
October 1994, when they held their last meeting in the West
Sumatra town of Bukittinggi.

Progress has been painfully, but understandably, slow. This
will be the sixth workshop and so far not a single cooperation
program has been started.

Any program agreed upon at the workshop will likely face major
political stumbling blocks because the conference has been deemed
informal in nature and agreements are not binding.

As Indonesian officials point out, however, such gatherings
bring countries with overlapping territorial claims in the South
China Sea into one forum where they can explore possibilities of
cooperation rather than indulging in antagonism.

Hasyim Djalal, Indonesia's ambassador-at-large for maritime
affairs, describes the workshop as a confidence building measure
which will eventually bring amity through cooperation.

"Countries in the South China Sea have limited experience in
cooperating with each other. On the contrary they have a lot of
experience in altercating," Hasyim told reporters on Thursday.

The Spratly Islands in the middle of the South China Sea are
claimed in part or full by six countries -- Malaysia, China,
Brunei, the Philippines, Vietnam and Taiwan.

Five other countries taking part in the workshop are
Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.

Each participant will be attending in an individual, non-
official capacity.

Indonesia, playing the role of an "honest broker" in the
Spratly conflict, will lend credence to the meeting with a visit
from Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Alatas, who is scheduled to
address the participants on Tuesday.

Alatas has repeatedly stressed in past workshops that the
annual gathering is not designed to resolve the conflict.
"Indonesia is not proposing any recipes for that (solution)," he
once said.

Hasyim Djalal on Thursday echoed Alatas' sentiments: "We're
trying to change the mood which has been fraught by strife for
centuries into a mood of cooperation."

He contended that such an effort could not be accomplished in
one or two days, or even in one or two years.

Consensus remains the discussion's key word.

There is no use in coming up with high-sounding resolutions if
not all the participants agree to take part, Hasyim said.

In keeping with the informality of the meeting, all the
workshops are held away from Jakarta. After the first in Bali in
1989, the meeting has been held in Bandung, Yogyakarta, Surabaya
and Bukittinggi.

The workshop is organized by the foreign ministry's Research
and Development Agency with the support of the Canadian
International Development Agency.

Three technical meetings have been held over the past year to
prepare the way for the Balikpapan workshop.

The first was a marine research meeting in Hanoi, the second a
marine law meeting in Phuket, Thailand. The third, concluded here
on Thursday, was on safety of navigation, shipping and
communications in the South China Sea.

During the meeting here, participants recognized the need for
multilateral cooperation and coordination in Search And Rescue
(SAR) activities.

They urged countries to delimit their respective SAR areas
with a view to enhance the effectiveness of SAR operations.

"This would in no way prejudice sovereignty or jurisdictional
claims," the participants said in a joint statement.

It is through these many joint activities that Indonesia hopes
to dissuade possible flare-ups in the dispute.

"Hopefully our friends in the South China Sea feel that
cooperation is better than confrontation," Hasyim commented.(mds)