PHILIPPINES OPENS SCHOOL ON CHINA SEA / AQUINO NEEDS RIGHT CHANNEL TO
CHINA[PHOTO -PANATAG SHOAL, DISPUTED AREA]
MANILA, JUNE 26, 2012
(INQUIRER) By Jerry E. Esplanada Associated Press, Philippine Daily
Inquirer - A Philippine official says he has opened a small kindergarten
school on a South China Sea island that is also claimed by five other countries.
Mayor Eugenio Bito-onon said Sunday that his aim was to help the 37-hectare
(91-acre) island's civilian community and not to antagonize rival claimant
countries.
The school was inaugurated without fanfare on June 15 with five students,
their parents and a teacher. A Philippine flag fluttered in the breeze in the
schoolyard.
The Philippines calls the island Pag-asa – or "hope" in Tagalog. It is
guarded by Filipino troops.
[PHOTO COURTESY OF CHINA POST ONLINE - In this Friday, June 15 photo
released by the Office of Kalayaan Municipality Mayor Eugenio Bito-onon, Mayor
Bito-onon, center with glasses, poses with a teacher, schoolchildren and their
parents beside a Philippine flag at the opening of Pag-asa elementary school on
a disputed South China Sea island. (AP)]
It is part of the Spratlys archipelago. China, Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia and
Vietnam also claim the islands.
Meanwhile, Malacañang and the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) have
ordered Sonia Brady, the country's new ambassador to China, to find a peaceful
solution to the Bajo de Masinloc (Scarborough Shoal) issue and employ diplomatic
means to resolve it.
DFA spokesman Raul Hernandez said Sunday that the department has expressed
confidence that Brady would be able to use all her diplomatic skills in finding
a temporary solution to the dispute between Manila and Beijing over the West
Philippine Sea (South China Sea) rock formation.
In a text message to the INQUIRER, Hernandez on Sunday said "the instructions
to Ambassador Brady were to find a peaceful solution to the Bajo de Masinloc
issue and to employ diplomatic means to resolve it."
The foreign office "has yet to receive updates" on the issue from the
Philippine embassy in the Chinese capital.
But Hernandez said, "consultations (between the two sides) will certainly
resume."
On May 27, President Benigno Aquino III named Brady, who served as envoy to
Beijing from 2006 to 2010, to her old post amid a growing clamor for a skilled
diplomat to handle the frayed ties with China caused by the territorial dispute.
Three days later, the Commission on Appointments (CA) confirmed the
appointment of the veteran diplomat, along with six career DFA officials.
The President earlier told Palace reporters, "given the complexities of our
relationship with China right now, it has to really be somebody who is the best
we can produce."
"[Brady] has been to China. We expect her to use her experience and contacts
to provide added insight and understanding of Chinese actions and policies,"
said Secretary Ricky Carandang, head of the Presidential Communications
Development and Strategic Planning Office.
As ambassador to Beijing, the 70-year-old Brady has concurrent jurisdiction
over North Korea and Mongolia.
Brady has been an adviser on foreign affairs since Aug. 19, 2011. She held
the DFA undersecretary for policy post from 2003 to 2006.
The Quezon native also served as director of the agency's Asia-Pacific office
from 1988 to 1992 and had been assigned to its political affairs office from
1968 to 1976.
FROM MANILA STANDARD
Aquino needs right channel to China Posted June
25th, 2012 by Francisco S. Tatad & filed under Main Stories.
[PHOTO -Photo illustration shows a Filipino-owned fishing boat sailing
off from Masinloc]
What diplomacy could not do, nature could. This seemed true when bad weather
reportedly forced Philippine and Chinese vessels to pull out of the disputed
Scarborough Shoal where they had been in a standoff since April 10. It turned
out later, however, that only the Philippine vessels had gone, and not the
Chinese.
President Benigno Aquino III has since ordered that the two ships belonging
to the Coast Guard and Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources return to the
shoal to assert the Philippine claim over it as part of its 200-mile Exclusive
Economic Zone.
The continuing bad weather, however, has prevented more aerial surveillance
of the shoal, according to the Secretary of National Defense. Thus it is not yet
clear whether the ships have been able to return.
The resumption of the standoff can only renew the tension obtaining before
the pullout. Apart from showing the flag, and the true state of the country's
naval defense, it will not be able to do much. But it will at least show how
necessary it is to get the territorial dispute between China and the Philippines
out of the way.
No territorial dispute is ever quickly settled. The parties normally manage
it over long periods of time. But if they are good neighbors, they try to avoid
any situation that could lead to unwanted clashes or to a full-blown war. The
Scarborough standoff may or may not have that potential, but it has undoubtedly
distracted government and disrupted its focus on development.
The Philippines renounces war as an instrument of national policy. As a
member of the United Nations, it wants to settle the dispute over Scarborough
and the Spratlys through the International Court of Justice, popularly known as
the World Court.
That is in full accord with the United Nations Charter, the UN Convention on
the Law of the Sea, and the full range of international law. A couple of its
neighbors have used this forum to settle their disputes. Case in point is the
territorial dispute over Sipadan and Ligitan islands between Indonesia and
Malaysia.
But this mode of settlement requires the consent of both parties, and China
is opposed to it. So the World Court option is out, for so long as China does
not change its position.
How to settle the territorial dispute is not the urgent problem now. How to
end the standoff and prevent its worsening fallout is what should concern Manila
and Beijing and their common friends at this time.
Praying that worse weather would sink or drive away the Chinese ships is not
a solution. Neither is brash rhetoric or kneejerk action. Still, prolonged
standoff could force the two governments to start talking, and intensify and
accelerate their search for a peaceful solution.
There is an urgent need for a real Chinese-Philippine dialogue at the highest
level. But this cannot come about without sufficient preparatory effort at the
lower (officials) level. Neither can this come about if the government insists
on conducting its diplomacy through the newspapers, and its responsible
officials continue to talk the way they have been talking.
While President Aquino remains the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of
the Philippines, it is not necessary that he take personal charge of running the
details of the government's Scarborough program.
Neither does it seem necessary that he be quoted in the media the way he has
allowed himself to be quoted so far, or that the official in charge of the
country's diplomacy, Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, should be talking
less like a foreign secretary and more like a naval officer.
Robust conversations between Manila and Beijing should be promoted, but they
should not be confined to formal meetings. There ought to be wide enough room
for a back channel where things said in unofficial conversations would have a
way of discussing the most difficult issues and influencing decisions at the
top.
The help of an eminent statesman respected by both China and the Philippines
or a third country friendly to both should be discreetly sought, to create a
mechanism for resolving issues like the present standoff.
The eminent personality is not easy to identify, assuming he exists. As for
the friendly country, that obviously cannot be the United States, a preeminent
rival of China, and often seen as a patron of the Philippines.
President Aquino may wish to start looking at the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization (SCO) or BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) for
a friendly country to help him out.
That would necessarily call for an expansion of the country's diplomatic
engagement with new partners, beyond the US orbit. But it should form part of
the Philippines' effort to tap every possible resource to enhance its position
as a peace-loving nation in the world.
It could also help mitigate China's impression that the Philippines has
become a major player in creating a US "ring around China", which could include
bases in Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, South Korea, and "enhanced military
capacities" in Singapore and Australia.
At the same time, independent of its purely diplomatic approach to the
problem, the Philippines could now consider partnering effectively and
extensively with various interested countries in exploring its continental shelf
or the areas within its EEZ for gas and oil and other mineral resources.
The country could probably learn from the example of Vietnam, which alone
among China's co-claimant of the Spratlys, has embarked upon an audacious
program of partnering with China's friends and perceived rivals—Russia, India,
US, UK, Japan, Malaysia, Canada and Australia—in the exploration and development
of energy resources within its maritime claim.
[PHOTO -Offshore lenders HSBC Holdings Plc and Credit Agricole CIB
signed the loan with Indovina Bank and five Vietnamese lenders for Petrovietnam subsidiary Binh Son Petrochemical Refinery
Co]
These include GazpromViet and Vietsovpetro, two joint ventures between
state-owned PetroVietnam and its Russian counterparts Gazprom and Zarubezhnef
respectively, which have allowed Vietnam to exploit mineral resources offshore
with the backing and tacit protection of Russia.
Likewise, joint ventures with Japan and India have allowed Vietnam to conduct
similar offshore explorations while enjoying the backing of these big regional
powers. For instance, India has deployed naval ships off the coast of Vietnam,
obviously to protect its joint venture with Vietnam (ONGC Videsh Ltd, OVL) from
any possible harassment by the Chinese navy or coast guard.
An interesting joint venture with Malaysia allows Vietnam to conduct
exploration within their shared economic zone in the South China Sea.
Some of these deals have sparked diplomatic protests against Vietnam, but
because of the other countries' stature and relationship with China, no maritime
incidents involving the partners have taken place, and the offshore exploration
and production activity has been able to proceed.
A more ambitious mineral exploration and production policy should allow the
Philippine government not only to replicate but above all to do better than what
Vietnam is doing. Even before talking to other possible partners, it could
probably propose joint ventures with China in areas where their maritime zones
intersect or overlap.
(Published in the Manila Standard Today newspaper on
/2012/June/25)
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2012 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE NEWS ONLINE
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rights reserved
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