29/07/2013
Vice President Joe Biden said the U.S. is pushing China to negotiate quickly with Southeast Asian nations on a code of conduct for the South China Sea, an area that’s a “major, major, major highway of commerce.”
China agreed during an Association of Southeast Asian Nations-hosted forum in Brunei late last month to meet with the 10-member group in September to develop rules to avoid conflict in the waters. Nguyen Tan Dung, prime minister of Asean member Vietnam, warned in May that miscalculations over territorial disputes could disrupt commerce, with two-thirds of all maritime trade moving through the area.
“We’re doing everything to encourage that to be done, but it has to be done,” Biden said in a Bloomberg Television interview on July 27, as he wrapped up a six-day trip to India and Singapore. “It’s in everyone’s interest, including China’s, to have it happen that way, through negotiating a settlement.”
Read more at Blommberg
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