The Philippines on Friday asked China to end “coercion and intimidation” in the dispute between the two countries over islands in the South China Sea, at a bilateral meeting in Manila.
“China and the Philippines agree that maritime issues should be resolved through dialogue and not coercion and intimidation,” said the Philippine deputy foreign minister. Theresa Lazaro, at a press conference in Manila ahead of the seventh meeting under the Bilateral Consultative Mechanism between the two countries, the first since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The two nations dispute several islands and reefs in the South China Sea, which Beijing claims almost entirely, though some are within a radius of about two hundred kilometers from the Philippines’ west coast, the UN’s border to determine sovereignty, and belong to the Philippines.
For your side, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Sun Weidong stressed that Manila and Beijing should “handle disagreements appropriately through friendly consultations and maintain friendly relations between the two countries”.
Both Lazaro and Sun led diplomatic delegations at the meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Philippine counterpart, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., in Beijing in January, in which the two leaders agreed to promote this consultation mechanism to seek “a consensus” on the territorial issue.
Since then, however, the territorial dispute has worsened.
Source: DN
