Sea row dominates ASEAN summit
11 May 2014, 10:42 -- Southeast Asian leaders met Sunday for a historic summit in former pariah Myanmar overshadowed by soaring tensions in the South China Sea.
The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is convening just days after both Vietnam and the Philippines locked horns with China in contested waters, stoking international alarm.
The summit, hosted for the first time by Myanmar in its showpiece capital Naypyidaw, is set to be dominated by discussion of the South China Sea, which is crisscrossed by key shipping lanes and thought to contain vast energy reserves, AFP reports.
In his opening address, Myanmar President Thein Sein said 'regional and global issues of great concern to ASEAN will be extensively discussed among ourselves', without directly mentioning the escalating maritime crisis.
ASEAN foreign ministers expressed 'serious concerns over the on-going developments' in a joint statement released Saturday as the bloc sought to present a unified front in dealing with the region's massive neighbor.
Tensions flared this week after Beijing controversially relocated a deep-water oil rig into territory also claimed by Hanoi.
The area around the drilling well has since seen several collisions between Chinese and Vietnamese ships, with the communist neighbors each blaming the other for the rise in tensions.
Source: http://voiceofrussia.com/news/2014_05_11/ Sea-row-dominates-ASEAN-summit-5064/
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