BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei (Updated 2:32 p.m.)— Southeast Asian leaders were upbeat Thursday about progress made on an ambitious plan to weld the region into a European Union-style economic community as a counterweight to Asian powerhouse China, while efforts were stalling on South China Sea disputes.
Leaders attending the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summit in Brunei hoped China would soon agree to start talks on a nonaggression pact to prevent a major clash in the disputed territories that could smoke out their region's robust economies.
China gave no clear indication when it would agree to negotiate such a stopgap accord, known in Asean parlance as a "Code of Conduct."
"Everybody is interested in having a peaceful resolution and also in voicing a concern that there have been increasing sea disputes," said Philippine President Benigno Aquino III after he and the other heads of state sat in a traditional dinner Wednesday.
About 77 percent of the work to turn the bustling region into a single market and production base, first laid out in a 2007 blueprint, were done, according to a confidential draft statement to be issued after the summit.
Nine leaders in the 10-nation bloc huddled behind closed doors Thursday at a cavernous, stone and marble building Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah had ordered built for the annual two-day summit.
Absent from the session was Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Rasak, who was campaigning for re-election back home.
Carl Thayer, an expert who has extensively studied the territorial conflicts, said Asean may have committed a strategic mistake of agreeing to a crucial process that could easily be stalled by China, which would not commit to anything that would restrict its plans.
"Asean is stuck in a bureaucratic rut," Thayer said.
The battle for ownership of potentially oil-rich territories in the South China Sea has settled into an uneasy stand-off since the last fighting, involving China and Vietnam, that killed more than 70 Vietnamese sailors in 1988. The other claimants are Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Taiwan.
New skirmishes erupted in the last two years, involving Vietnam, the Philippines and China, which claims the waterway virtually in its entirety.
Concerns have been exacerbated by China's deployment of a patrol ship, equipped with a helipad, to guard its claimed areas and establishment last year of what they called Sansha city on a remote island 350 kilometers (220 miles) from southern Hainan to administer areas being contested by rival claimant countries.
A tense standoff erupted last year between Chinese and Filipino ships over the Scarborough Shoal remained unresolved, prompting the Philippines in January to take a daring legal step that challenged China's vast claims before a tribunal under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. China ignored the move.
Philippines’ Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario said all the five arbiters of the tribunal have been appointed and they could now start looking into the case if they declare they have jurisdiction.
The long-raging disputes have threatened to divide Asean. Last year, its foreign ministers failed to issue a joint statement — a first in the bloc's 45-year history — after Cambodia refused mention of the territorial rifts in the statement, provoking protests from Vietnam and the Philippines.
Cambodia, a known China ally, has towed Beijing's line that the disputes should not be brought to the international arena. China wants the disputes settled by negotiating one on one with each of the rival claimants, something that will give it advantage because of its sheer size.
During the summit, Asean leaders also expressed concern about North Korea's latest threats. (AP)