China, ASEAN to sign pact on sea feud in 3 years

Ministers from ASEAN member countries at the conference in Jakarta. Pic/AP

China and Southeast Asian nations agreed on Thursday to try and conclude within three years a long-delayed nonaggression pact aimed at preventing the frequent territorial spats in the busy South China Sea from turning into a major armed conflict.

China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations agreed Thursday during a meeting between the 10-nation bloc's foreign ministers and China's top diplomat Wang Yi in the Indonesian capital of Jakarta to guidelines to complete their code of conduct negotiations before fall 2026, a Southeast Asian diplomat said.

China and four of ASEAN's member states - Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam - along with Taiwan have been locked in a decades-long territorial standoff in the disputed waterway, a key passageway for global trade that is believed to atop vast undersea deposits of oil.

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