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Monday, April 07, 2008
Palace asks House to reconsider baseline bill
MANILA-- Malacañang has asked House leaders to reconsider a pending legislation that seeks to enclose the Kalayaan Group of Islands and the Scarborough Shoals within the archipelagic baseline.
In a letter to House Speaker Prospero Nograles last April 4, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita reaffirmed the position of the executive branch relative to the Philippine archipelagic baseline, which is "to enclose the main archipelago within the baselines and treat the Kalayaan Group of Islands as a regime of islands."
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Ermita, who is also the chairman of the Commission on Maritime and Ocean Affairs (Cmoa), said this position was relayed through the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) during the hearings of the House committee on foreign affairs on House Bill (HB) 1202.
He said this position was arrived at after a series of inter-departmental discussions and consultations with legal luminaries on international law.
"The executive's position is consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), which provides that an archipelagic state, such as the Philippines, may consist wholly of one or more archipelagos and may include other islands," he said.
"As an archipelagic state, our archipelagic baselines should be drawn along the general configuration of the archipelago, while the other islands shall have normal baselines," he said.
The executive secretary assured the House that not enclosing Kalayaan Islands and Scarborough Shoal within the archipelagic baselines "does not mean giving up our sovereignty over these islands."
Treating Kalayaan Islands and Scarborough Shoal under the "regime of islands" is consistent with the fact that they are integral parts of an archipelagic Philippines, Ermita explained.
He stressed that "the executive's position will not diminish our exclusive economic zone or continental shelf."
Quoting the UN Convention, Ermita explained that an island that can "sustain human habitation or economic life of it own" generates its own territorial sea, contiguous zone, exclusive economic zone and continental shelf. (Sunnex)
For more Philippine news, visit Sun.Star Pampanga. (April 7, 2008 issue)
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