S China Sea should not overshadow ASEAN discussions: Shanmugam

SINGAPORE — Tensions in the South China Sea are a subset of the broader regional agenda, and the issue should not dominate discussions at the 48th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) and related meetings taking place this week, said Foreign Minister K Shanmugam.

Speaking to reporters before leaving for the meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Mr Shanmugam said there were other important issues to be discussed, including Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) community-building efforts, as well as security threats to the region.

“Undoubtedly some countries will raise the (South China Sea) issue, and we have to deal with it appropriately. It cannot dominate the agenda, and I think we have to try to find a way of moving forward on all the issues, and the South China Sea tensions are one of the issues,” said the minister.

Mr Shanmugam, who is also Law Minister, said Singapore is not a claimant state, and what the Republic hopes to see is a dialling down of tensions. The best way to do so, he said, is to start with negotiating a code of conduct for parties that have claims in the disputed waters.

As Singapore will be taking over as coordinator within ASEAN for the ASEAN-China dialogue relationship this week, Mr Shanmugam said Singa­pore would try and make progress on the issue.

“Progress on the code of conduct has not been as good as we could have hoped for, and the task we will take on as country coordinator is to try and make progress,” said Mr Shanmugam.

“The code of conduct, where people agree on how parties behave with one another (while the overlapping claims are being resolved), would be an important step.”

ASEAN and China agreed in 2012 to negotiate a code of conduct, but progress has been slow.

China claims most of the potentially energy-rich South China Sea, through which US$5 trillion (S$6.89 trillion) in ship-borne trade passes every year, and rejects the rival claims of Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan.

The United States has called on the various claimants to settle their differences through talks and has said the American navy aims to protect sea lanes critical to global trade. But China rejects US involvement in the dispute. Last week, it accused the US of militarising the South China Sea.

Mr Shanmugan said the AMM would be very important for ASEAN because the grouping needs to take stock of its 2015 community-building target. The bloc has set itself the ambitious target of being an integrated community by the end of this year. The ministers will also review the progress of the ASEAN Community post-2015 vision.

“We will form a bloc which has freer movement of goods and services and people which has tremendous potential (by the end of the year),” said Mr Shanmugam.

He added that Singapore would benefit from the ASEAN Community, as it is a global centre for financial services and can thus also perform the role of a hub for ASEAN.

My Shanmugam also noted that this year is the 10th anniversary of the East Asia Summit (EAS) between ASEAN and eight other partners. Priority areas to be discussed under the EAS include transnational terrorism, maritime security and cybersecurity.

In particular, terrorism will be high on the agenda of the EAS and other meetings.

“There is homegrown terrorism that needs to be talked about. There are also self-radicalisation issues to be talked about. There are also influences from abroad that will need to be dealt with,” he said.

He added that “greater intelligence sharing, identification of potential threats and movement of those who could want to do or may want to do bad things to us” would be discussed among the ministers.

“Also, having policies in place which try and rehabilitate effectively and having socially inclusive policies. These are all important.”