President Rodrigo Duterte is considering to include former Interior Secretary Rafael Alunan in the team of former President Fidel V. Ramos as special envoy to China.
Malacañang has yet to decide on how the Philippines should go about discussions on its dispute with China over the South China Sea, said Communications Secretary Marin Andanar.
Andanar said that Duterte and Ramos have yet to come up with the timeline of the talks with Beijing.
Ramos accepted Duterte’s offer to be the Philippines’ special envoy to China last week, coming on the heels of a UN-backed tribunal’s ruling against China’s territorial claims over a vast expanse of the sea.
The Philippines’ territorial dispute with China was discussed during the National Security Council meeting presided over by Duterte and joined by former Presidents Ramos, Benigno Aquino III, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Joseph Estrada, along with top security officials.
Malacañang declined to reveal details of the meeting.
Duterte had said in his first State of the Nation Address that the Philippines will utilize the ruling of The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration in efforts to resolve the dispute with China.
US Secretary of State John Kerry signaled that Beijing must recognize an international tribunal’s ruling against its sweeping claims in the South China Sea when negotiating with the Philippines over disputes in the strategic waters.
Speaking in the Philippines, Kerry backed Manila’s assertion that any talks over the sea must have that ruling as its basis.
“Our friend and ally, the Philippines, can only do so on terms that are acceptable to the government of the Philippines,” Kerry said.
China rejected this month’s ruling by an international arbitration panel, which rejected Beijing’s claims to historic and economic rights over much of the sea, and objects to any talks that rely on it. The Philippines refuses to negotiate on that basis, leaving any talks in limbo.
“What we have is essentially a holding pattern between China, the Philippines and the US,” said William Choong, a Singapore-based Asian security specialist at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Beijing and Manila said this week they hoped to continue efforts to negotiate their differences over the South China Sea. But both also are constrained by their domestic politics in how far they can compromise.
In the aftermath of the tribunal’s July 12 ruling, some Chinese citizens called for boycotts of US and Philippine products, picketed American fast-food chains and spread angry rhetoric on social media.