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.