E. Timor, Spratlys to figure at ASEAN summit

E. Timor, Spratlys to figure at ASEAN summit

MANILA (Reuters): Southeast Asian leaders will discuss East Timor's future and a code of conduct to prevent conflicts in the South China Sea when they meet next month, Philippine Foreign Secretary Domingo Siazon said on Friday.

Siazon said Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, who would also be visiting Manila to meet the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders, would make "an important declaration", but declined to elaborate.

Leaders of the 10-nation ASEAN will hold an informal summit in the Philippine capital in the last week of November and meet dialogue partners Japan, China and South Korea.

Siazon said the summit would discuss economic and financial cooperation as well as security issues, including the situation on the Korean peninsula.

"There's even East Timor, what to do about East Timor the next three years because the United Nations will administer it," he told reporters.

Siazon said there could also be "discussion and signing ...(or) discussion and no signing" of a proposed regional code of conduct to govern actions of countries with competing claims over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea.

The Philippines has been pushing for such a code to prevent accidental conflicts in the Spratlys, a cluster of potentially oil-rich isles and reefs claimed wholly or in part by China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei.

Except for China and Taiwan, all the claimants are members of ASEAN.

Rival claims have sparked tension in the area. On Thursday, the Philippines accused Vietnamese troops, holding a reef that they both claim, of firing shots at a Philippine military surveillance plane and filed a diplomatic protest, expressing "greatest concern" over the incident.

Vietnam said it had full sovereignty over the Spratlys and said claimants there should exercise restraint.

Tension also flared in July when a Philippine Navy vessel sank a Chinese fishing boat in another area of the Spratlys.

Manila said it was an accident while Beijing said its boat was rammed.