Territorial workshop fails to reach consensus on CBM

Territorial workshop fails to reach consensus on CBM

By Prapti Widinugraheni

BUKITTINGGI, West Sumatra (JP): Tough talks over the
territorial claims and disputes in the South China Sea proceeded
here yesterday despite the fact that workshop participants failed
to reach a consensus on the group's confidence building measures
(CBM).

"Some participants supported the measures, some declined to
give their opinions while others were doubtful whether they could
convey the CBM to their respective governments or whether they
could be committed to it," said Hasjim Djalal, Indonesia's
Ambassador-at-Large for Law of the Sea and resource person at the
fifth workshop on managing potential conflicts in the South China
Sea yesterday.

Despite the outcomes, he acknowledged that "doubtful"
participants had all the right to express their opinions. He
declined to name the conflicting countries in the issue.

"In the end, we agreed that the CBM, that we established
several years ago, is good for our region. But we have yet to
reach a consensus on all of the points in it," Hasjim said.

Head of the Taiwanese delegation Kuen Chen-fu had earlier
indicated that disagreements had developed as to whether or not
the specific issue of the Spratlys and Paracels should be
incorporated and resolved in the workshop.

Taiwan, he said, had proposed that the issue be expanded to a
more general level of "territorial claims and disputes," instead
of specifically discussing the Spratlys and Paracels and allowing
other disputes in the region to be included as well.

Taiwan's proposal was later adopted when the title of the
topic was changed from an issue of the Spratlys and Paracels into
"territorial claims and disputes".

The conference, which has been hosted annually by Indonesia
since 1990, is currently establishing projects of cooperation
around the Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea.

Such projects are considered effective ways to prevent further
conflicts from erupting between the six countries who claim all
or part of the archipelagos.

Participants from the claimant parties are the Philippines,
Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, China and Taiwan and also included are
Laos, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Cambodia and resource
persons from Canada.

Despite failures to reach any sort of consensus, Hasjim said
that compared to the previous workshop in Surabaya last year,
which identified points in the CBM, participants were now able to
go into more detailed discussion.

Government

Earlier yesterday, a proposal to encourage more government
involvement from claimant parties and also non-South China Sea
entities in joint projects in the South China Sea region was
received with a minimal enthusiasm by several participants at the
South China Sea conference.

At least two participants, China and Taiwan, considered it too
early to involve "outside" parties and government officials.

"We are taking advantage of being informal and I don't think
it is time to formalize this. Once it is formalized, there will
be government officials sitting here who are responsible for
their own people, their own parliaments and congresses, and it
will get more complicated," said Taiwan's Kuen Chen- fu during a
break.

Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Alatas earlier suggested
involving more formal entities and non-South China Sea countries
in the joint South China Sea region projects.

Xu Guangjian, head of the Chinese delegation, said in a
separate interview that at present it was "useless and
unnecessary" for countries outside the South China Sea region to
be involved in the talks. He stated: "We are the ones living
around the area so we can discuss the issue among ourselves."

He said, however, that they could still be allowed to
participate through technical and financial assistance.

Fu said that government involvement may become unavoidable in
the future as official agreements and regulations will have to be
ratified, but that "for the time being, it is unnecessary".

Presently there are no projects which are concrete enough to
involve any "outside" countries, he added.

Xu said that agreement on the participation of any non-South
China Sea country should only be made under the consensus of all
participants.