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US to oppose efforts to block access to South China Sea under code of conduct
By MICHAELA DEL CALLAR WASHINGTON - A senior State Department official said Wednesday (Thursday in Manila) that the United States will oppose any effort to block them from having access to the disputed South China Sea under a code of conduct being hammered out by Southeast Asian nations and China.
Amy Archibald, Director of the State Department’s Southeast Asia maritime office, said the code of conduct should not be used as a tool to exclude other countries and regional partners from the resource-rich waters where China and its smaller neighbors, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan, have overlapping claims.
“What we don’t want to see is a code of conduct that will be used to exclude important regional partners,” Archibald told visiting Filipino journalists in an interview. “We expect to be in the South China Sea as we have been and we will definitely oppose any effort not to include us.”
Although not a party to the disputes, Archibald said the US, as a major trading nation in the Pacific, is committed to ensuring “a free and open, secure, prosperous, resilient region,” adding a “good” code of conduct can help them with those objectives.
A regional code of conduct aims to prevent conflicting territorial claims in the vast, potentially oil-rich region from erupting into violent confrontations or, worse, an economically devastating major conflict.
China, which considers the sea disputes a purely Asian issue, is opposed to any foreign intervention, particularly from the US, a longtime defense treaty ally of the Philippines.
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The US and China are at odds over the long-seething territorial row in the strategic waters, where Beijing has turned several former reefs into artificial islands with military facilities, runways and surface to air missiles.
Analysts say America's continuing presence in the South China Sea will ensure a "balance of power" in the region.
While the US supports a peaceful resolution of the disputes consistent with international law, including the crafting of a code of conduct, Greg Poling, senior fellow and director at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), stressed that the accord must ensure that it does not violate the rights of third parties.
“Nobody’s going to accept Chinese restrictions on lawful activities in international waters,” Poling said in a separate interview.
Archibald said a code is not just a matter of getting an agreement, but negotiating parties must strive for a “good agreement” that will preserve a free and open Pacific.
“We prosper when we have international norms and stability, and so we are looking for a code of conduct that would essentially promote international rules-based order in the maritime environment," she said. — VBL, GMA News