THE Foreign Affairs Department said Wednesday it is verifying reports that China has built up rocket launchers in Fiery Cross Reef or Kagitingan Reef in the disputed South China Sea.
Kagitingan Reef is within the Spratly Islands, where China and the Philippines have conflicting territorial claims.
Foreign Affairs spokesman Robespierre Bolivar reiterated that the Philippines has “dominion, sovereignty and jurisdiction” over the Kagitingan and Zamora reefs.
“We are currently verifying this information with our relevant agencies,” he said of a report in the Chinese state-run Defense Times that said that China has installed Norinco CS/AR-1 55mm anti-frogman rocket launcher defense systems on Kagitingan Reef to ward off Vietnamese military combat divers.
The rocket launcher defense system is designed to discover, identify and attack enemy combat divers.
Although the report did not say when the systems were installed, it described the action as its May 2014 response to Vietnamese divers who installed large numbers of fishing nets in the Paracel Islands.
China claims more than 90 percent of the South China Sea where Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei have overlapping claims.
The Panganiban Reef, which is 70 nautical miles from Palawan and is located within the country’s 200 nautical miles exclusive economic zone (EEZ) has been occupied by China since 1994, when Beijing transformed the reef into a highly fortified military garrison.
There are more than 40 reef islands in the South China Sea which have been occupied and even garrisoned by other countries.
Vietnam occupied six islands, seventeen reefs and three banks; Taiwan has only one island and one reef; Malaysia has one artificial island and five reefs; Brunei claims a relatively small area including islands on Louisa reef; Indonesia claims are not on any island, but on maritime rights; the Philippines claims eight islands while China has eight reefs.
Reports of the missile build-up came as the Philippines and China were set to hold their first bilateral meeting on the South China Sea on Friday in Guiyang, China, with Ambassador Chito Sta. Romana leading the Philippine delegation.
“We will discuss areas where we have differences and try to understand each other’s position,” Sta. Romana said.
He added that both Manila and Beijing will also explore ways of managing their differences to further ease tensions in the South China Sea and to prevent any escalation or possible confrontation.
“The basic approach is really to manage the disputes and to be able to discuss in a frank and friendly way the developments in the South China Sea,” he said.
Recently he also said that both Manila and Beijing have agreed to hold meetings at least twice a year.
“Or more often in case the need arises,” he said.
The envoy said the creation of the BCM is in line with the diplomatic track of President Rodrigo Duterte in resolving the territorial dispute with China.
“The problem is, if you put the dispute in front or center of the bilateral relations and then you use that, you have to solve this first before you can have trade, before you can have cultural links and so on and so forth. The result is the relations will be frozen because the disputes cannot be solved overnight. It will have to be discussed over months, if not years, or perhaps even decades of negotiations,” Sta. Romana said recently.
“So the basic approach of the Duterte administration has been to put it on separate tracks, take the dispute from the front and center, put it in a separate track, and there you discuss it, you deal with it, one by one, the issue of South China Sea, the issue of ownership, the sovereignty issue, the issue of tribunal award and the issue of the nine-dash line,” he added.