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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, December 19) – Foreign Secretary Teodoro “Teddy Boy” Locsin, Jr. and his US counterpart recently spoke about reinforcing the “binding nature” of the victory in the Philippines arbitration in the South China Sea dispute, revealed on Saturday. US State Department.
Locsin also announced his “great phone conversation” with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday night. In a tweet, he said the senior Washington official pledged to do whatever he can to help the Philippines obtain COVID-19 vaccines from Pfizer following a reportedly failed deal.
Pompeo, in a separate tweet, chose to highlight his talk about the “shared interests” of the Philippines and the United States in the South China Sea.
“Secretary Pompeo and Secretary Locsin discussed opportunities to further strengthen the US-Philippines alliance and the binding nature of the 2016 arbitration tribunal award for all parties in the South China Sea,” the State Department of South China said. United States in a short statement posted on its website. .
“The two secretaries also discussed the economic, security, democratic and people-to-people ties that make up the strong bond between our two countries,” he added, without going into details.
In 2016, an arbitral tribunal in The Hague recognized the sovereign rights of the Philippines in areas within its exclusive economic zone that China is challenging. Manila calls the areas it claims the Western Philippine Sea.
The arbitration ruling ruled out Beijing’s broad claim over almost the entire South China Sea and said Chinese forces violated the rights of the Philippines when they built artificial islands, prevented Filipino fishermen from fishing and interfered with oil exploration in the Sea. of the Western Philippines. While the United States does not claim any part of the world’s vast waterway, it conducts freedom of navigation operations and calls most of Beijing’s claims “illegal.”
The arbitral tribunal was constituted under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the Philippines and China signed in 1982 and 1994, respectively, but Beijing refuses to recognize the landmark decision. President Rodrigo Duterte agreed to set it aside to pursue other areas of cooperation, including planned oil and gas exploration in disputed areas.
Retired Supreme Court Deputy Justice Antonio Carpio is urging the government to propose an enforcement mechanism, probably in the form of sanctions, in the absence of a “world police” to enforce arbitration awards.
READ: The Philippines is urged to propose sanctions for states that challenge the arbitration decision
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