Duterte now prefers bilateral talks with China on sea dispute

MANILA, Philippines — President Rodrigo Duterte wants to solve the Philippines’ longstanding maritime dispute with China through bilateral channels, Malacañang said Thursday which marked an apparent departure from the leader’s initial preference for multilateral talks to settle the sea feud.

Philippine-China relations had improved under Duterte, who set aside Manila’s arbitral award from a United Nations-backed tribunal in exchange for billion dollars’ worth of Chinese investments.

Ties between Manila and Beijing had soured after Duterte’s predecessor filed, and won, a case in the tribunal against China’s sweeping claims to over most part of the South China Sea.

But China rejected the international court’s verdict and insisted it wanted to solve the sea row bilaterally.

Duterte, who met his Chinese counterpart in Vietnam early this month, was quoted as saying in a report by state-run news agency Xinhua that Manila “is willing to properly handle maritime issues through bilateral channels in accordance with consensus reached by the two sides.”

Asked to confirm the president’s reported pronouncement, Harry Roque, Duterte’s spokesman, said the Philippine leader indeed agreed to fix the issue with Beijing through bilateral negotiations.

“I can confirm the report that the President has articulated preference for bilateral talks rather than multilateral talks in resolving the dispute,” Roque told a press conference.

“He has said it time and again that he does not see any utility in talking to third parties who are not parties to the conflict,” he added.

According to a report by Reuters in May last year, Duterte, still a presidential candidate at that time, said he would call for multilateral talks that would include the US and Japan as well as rival claimants to resolve the sea spat.

The Philippines claims parts of the South China Sea within its exclusive economic zone and calls it the West Philippine Sea. Aside from Manila—Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei also have overlapping claims.

Asked to explain the chief executive’s apparent policy shift, Roque said: “I do not know if this is a major shift. But what I do know is President Duterte has been consistent that he is open to bilateral talks as far as resolving the conflict is concerned.”

“So, while they have said that they are pursuing bilateral relations, they have done so with all the other claimant countries. And China assured us that they have excellent bilateral relations with all the claimant countries as of today,” he added.

Last May, representatives from the Philippines and China conducted its inaugural meeting of their bilateral consultation mechanism to resolve the maritime dispute.

Code of Conduct ‘should be legally binding’

As China and the 10-nation Southeast Asian bloc are about to start negotiations for the text of a maritime code of conduct, Roque said the Philippines would push for a legally-binding document, something experts say China is unlikely to agree to.

“I think all the parties want it to be somehow legally binding. Otherwise, if it’s merely aspirational, then it will not promote the kind of peace and stability that they are hoping for,” the Palace spokesman said.

“But we will see how negotiations go. Since we haven’t been even started with negotiations, we do not know what countries will agree upon,” he added.

Roque, an international lawyer himself, also said the UN-backed court’s ruling favoring Manila is unlikely to be mentioned in the COC.

“To begin with, the arbitral ruling is only binding on the Philippines and China. That is the effect of arbitral awards. It’s only binding on parties thereto,” he explained.

“So the arbitral ruling does not promote multilateral solution to the South China Sea because it’s only binding on China and the Philippines,” he added.

“And secondly, the award itself is self-executory. The Philippines does not have to do anything else to implement that decision. That’s the distinction between international and domestic law.”

The start of the talks was announced three months after the framework agreement, or outline, on the COC was concluded.

The outline, however, was still lacking details and repeated main points in the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China Sea, a non-binding agreement which did not prevent the building of islands and outposts by Beijing in disputed waters.

The phrase "legally binding" was also avoided in the framework, which was supposed to guide further negotiations on the COC.

READ: ASEAN, China agree to start talks on South China Sea code | ASEAN goes soft on China as sea code talks start