Asean summit split over South China Sea dispute
14 Jul 2012
Foreign ministers of the 10-member Asean bloc who met in the Cambodian capital of Pnom Penh failed to strike an agreement as days of hectic talks failed to clear the group's stand on China's territorial dispute over the South China Sea.
The summit ended on Friday without the final communique for want of a code of conduct to sooth tension triggered by the South China Sea dispute.
With China claiming sovereignty over nearly all of the resource-rich South China Sea, an area in which all littoral states, including the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, have competing claims, there was no meeting of minds at the summit.
The issue has been further vitiated by reports that China is going to set up a naval base in the South China Sea, which includes vital shipping lanes.
The communiqué was stuck on the Philippines-China dispute over some small islands in the South China Sea.
Philippines had insisted that Asean refer to its stand-off in June with China over a rocky island formations known as the Scarborough Shoal, but it failed to make it to the communiqué because of objection by Cambodia, a Beijing ally and chair of the meeting.
