US conference discusses East Sea dispute management

The one-day event, held at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) headquarters by the CSIS Southeast Asia Programme and Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, attracted many experts and scholars from research institutes of the US, Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, China, Malaysia, and Vietnam. 

Participants expressed concern over recent developments in the East Sea and the risk of conflict ignited by an incident between disputing parties, and warned relevant countries to give clear messages and appropriate changes in their policies to prevent disputes in the sea. 

They discussed legal political efforts to manage disputes and promote peace and stability in the East Sea, stressing that regional differences should be resolved by ASEAN countries themselves in line with a Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC) and trust building measures. 

According to Prashanth Parameswaran from the Diplomat magazine, building trust among disputing countries in the East Sea is very important.

He raised his concern about the reality that on one hand, countries claim that they want to create a stable environment, but on the other, they conduct unilateral actions to destabilize the region. 

This is repeated in the East Sea issue, he said. 

This conference offered a good chance for experts, scholars and journalists to have deep and multidisciplinary discussions and analysis of developments in the East Sea in recent years, especially recent actions to hinder oil and gas exploitation activities of countries in the sea.-VNA