Our position on WPS has not changed --Palace official

From the Philippine News Agency (Apr 22): Our position on WPS has not changed --Palace official

The government is determined to stand by the rule of law in its claim on parts of the West Philippine Sea(WPS)(South China Sea), a Malacanang official said Tuesday.

“Legally, we file the case before the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea,” Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said in a Palace media briefing.

“What we wish to emphasize is that we have always abided by a rules-based regime in coming up with a resolution to the South China Sea,” he added.

Lacierda raised the issue in reaction to reports that Code of Conduct in the West Philippine Sea will be the main agenda of the China-ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting on Tuesday which is being held in Thailand.

He said that the draft Code of Conduct has been previously given already to the Chinese.

“It has been given to the Chinese for the review,” the Malacanang official said.

“We certainly would hope that the Code of Conduct would move forward in order to lay clearly the base or rules on the Code of Conduct for the South China Sea,” he added.

He also said that Malacanang maintained that the resolution to the South China Sea cannot be “just bilateral”.

“Because you have a number of neighboring countries disputing waters in the South China Sea, and therefore, the resolution should be multilateral,” Lacierda said.

http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=1&sid=&nid=1&rid=636994