Leaders from Southeast Asia urge peaceful resolution of South China Sea conflicts without using

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Leaders from Southeast Asia urge peaceful resolution of South China Sea conflicts without using coercion or threats.

Countries surround China's land and maritime boundaries, and the international community wants China to halt
The South China Sea's "unsafe and destabilizing behavior" alarmed Australia's prime minister on Wednesday, pointing to the day's collision between Philippine and Chinese ships.

As his nation concluded a three-day ASEAN meeting, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made statements that did not directly criticize China for a slew of incidents in the disputed waters.

A day after Chinese and Philippine coast guard warships crashed near a disputed shoal in the South China Sea, injuring four Filipino crew members, ASEAN leaders instead called for disagreements to be resolved via dialogue rather than threats.

Authorities from China and the Philippines alternated blame for the event. Last year, there were multiple heated encounters between Philippine and Chinese coast guard ships in the contested area.

The prime minister of Laos, Sonexay Siphandone, and Albanese co-chaired the summit. Albanese expressed concern about Tuesday's confrontation for Australia. He declared, "It is risky and raises the possibility of miscalculation, which can then lead to escalation."

Citing a 2016 arbitration verdict in The Hague, Netherlands, that invalidated Beijing's enormous territorial claims in the South China Sea, which conflict with the claims of several ASEAN governments, Australia had supported the Philippines' push to have the ASEAN declaration accepted at the close of the summit. China rejected the decision.

The 2016 ruling was not mentioned in the Melbourne Declaration, which was made public late on Wednesday. To commemorate 50 years since Australia became the first external ASEAN partner, a summit was convened in the Australian city.

The statement advocated for the peaceful settlement of conflicts in conformity with international law, particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, "without resorting to the threat or use of force" through legal and diplomatic channels.

It stated, "We urge all nations to refrain from taking any unilateral actions that jeopardize regional peace, security, and stability." In order to find language that ASEAN leaders could agree upon during the summit, Albanese said concessions had to be made.

Everyone agrees that we must ensure that any operation in the South China Sea reduces tension rather than escalating it, according to Albanese.

The declaration's omission of a specific reference of China, according to Damien Kingsbury, a Southeast Asia scholar at Deakin University, was a hint to Malaysia's more accommodating stance toward the Chinese as well as to nations close to Beijing, such as Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar.

According to Kingsbury, it's "a veiled criticism of China, which is about as strong as consensus would allow." At the September ASEAN meeting in Indonesia, leaders decided to move up the negotiation process with China in order to finalize a code of conduct for the South China Sea in three years. A code like that would try to stop dangerous and inflammatory behavior.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang, and Vice President Kamala Harris attended that summit.

After Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has led ASEAN for the longest. She stated on Tuesday that it will take some time to finalize the code because there are still challenging issues to be settled.

The summit has also been clouded by the ongoing violence and humanitarian catastrophe in Myanmar, an ASEAN nation where a military junta took power in 2021. The leaders' statement stated that they "strongly condemn the continued acts of violence."

Officially, Myanmar was not allowed to attend the Melbourne conference. Thet Tun, an Australian diplomat, is reportedly still representing Myanmar at the summit, but neither the Australian government nor the Myanmar Embassy in Australia would comment on this.

On Monday, some 200 protestors voiced their opposition to the presence of any representatives from Myanmar at the summit.

Xanana Gusmão, the prime minister of East Timor, was also present at the summit in an official capacity as an observer, after ASEAN's agreement to admit Asia's newest nation.