Philippines pushes for South China Sea code by year end: ‘we owe it to the world’

As Southeast Asian leaders descend on Cebu in the Philippines for the 48th Asean summit on May 8, immediate concerns such as the global energy crunch will top the agenda. Yet a year-end deadline to finalise a long-delayed code of conduct in the South China Sea looms for bloc chair Manila. At a panel at Atma Jaya University in Jakarta on Thursday, Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Theresa Lazaro stressed that completing the code this year was “something that we owe the world as well as the...

By Jean Iau