Differences over the South China Sea forced countries from Southeast Asia, along with China and the United States, to cancel a joint statement at a meeting of defense ministers in Malaysia on Wednesday.
The Chinese Ministry of Defense confirmed that the meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, had failed to conclude a joint declaration. In a statement on its website, the ministry implied the United States was the main reason for the breakdown in the discussions.
The ministry did not mention the South China Sea or China’s insistence that the statement not include any mention of the strategic waterway.
Diplomats from the region said that China did not want even a factual statement on the South China Sea to be included in the joint declaration scheduled for the end of the gathering Wednesday afternoon.
The meeting was split between countries that agreed with China and those that strongly disagreed, including Australia, Japan and the United States, two senior diplomats involved in the talks said.
China maintains that its territorial claims in the South China Sea must be discussed with individual countries that also have claims. It has consistently opposed efforts to have conflicting claims discussed in a regional setting like ASEAN. The ASEAN defense ministers are meeting in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, with their counterparts from Australia, India, Japan and the United States.
U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter was attending the meeting, and the United States led the effort to have the sea accorded a place in the communiqué, the diplomats said. Carter met with China’s minister of defense, Chang Wanquan, on Tuesday in Malaysia, where the South China Sea was high on the agenda.
— New York Times News Service
