Indonesia yesterday said it does not recognize China’s claims over the South China Sea, despite signing a maritime development deal with Beijing, as some analysts warned the pact risked compromising its sovereign rights.
Beijing has long clashed with Southeast Asian neighbors over the South China Sea, which it claims almost in its entirety, based on a “nine-dash line” on its maps that cuts into the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) of several countries.
Joint agreements with China in the strategic waterway have been sensitive for years, with some nations wary of deals they fear could be interpreted as legitimizing Beijing’s vast claims.
Photo: Reuters
In 2016, an arbitral tribunal said the Chinese claim, based on its old maps, has no basis in international law, a decision China refuses to recognize.
A joint statement issued at the weekend during Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s visit to Beijing mentioned the two countries had “reached important common understanding on joint development in areas of overlapping claims.”
The Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has repeatedly said the country is a non-claimant state in the South China Sea and has no overlapping jurisdiction with China.
Yesterday, the ministry said its position was unchanged and the agreement would have no impact on its sovereign rights.
“Indonesia reiterates its position that those [Chinese] claims have no international legal basis,” it said.
“The partnership does not impact sovereignty, sovereign rights or Indonesia’s jurisdiction in the North Natuna Sea,” it said.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the clause “clarifies the political consensus and direction of co-operation between the two sides on joint development in the overlapping maritime areas claimed by the two countries.”
Chinese ministry spokesperson Lin Jian (林劍) said Indonesia and China would further explore topics such as the content and mode of cooperation, adding that there was a historical basis for China’s South China Sea claims and that consensus would benefit both.
China’s U-shaped line, based on its old maps, begins off central Vietnam and runs into waters off Indonesia’s Natuna islands, more than 1,000km south of the Chinese island of Hainan.
It crosses into the EEZs of Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam, and is patrolled by an armada of the Chinese coast guard, which neighbors accuse of aggression and seeking to disrupt energy and fisheries activity.
China typically says its vessels are preventing incursions into its territory.
The Indonesian ministry said the economic agreement on maritime issues with China covered fisheries and fish conservation, and hoped it would be a model to safeguard peace and friendship.
However, some Indonesian analysts said that signing such an agreement could have repercussions and be interpreted as a change in stance.
“If we refer to the official joint statement, that means we recognize overlapping claims,” maritime analyst Aristyo Rizka Darmawan said, adding that it could compromise Indonesia’s sovereign rights to exploit resources in its EEZ.
Indonesia might have signed the agreement with the intention of boosting economic ties, he added.
Klaus Heinrich Raditio, a lecturer in Chinese politics, said Indonesia never had overlapping claims to begin with and the clause’s inclusion in the statement was “inappropriate.”
“This joint statement puts our national interests at risk,” he said, adding that it could still be renegotiated.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS