PALACE WARNS HOUSE
Baselines bill to set off war
By Christine Avendaño
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 19:44:00 04/06/2008
MANILA, Philippines -- Malacañang has formally asked House leaders to reconsider a pending bill that seeks to enclose areas in the Spratlys being claimed by the country within the archipelagic baselines, which, according to a Palace official, would provoke the country into war with fellow Spratlys-claimant and military giant, China.
But it would not be easy to withdraw House Bill 3216 as this was already passed in second reading, Palace officials conceded.
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo met with some members of the House last Friday on the baselines bill. Cabinet officials discussed the "serious implications'' if Congress were to pass a law that sought to delineate the country's archipelagic baselines to include the Spratlys, a chain of isles and reefs in the South China Sea which are also being claimed by Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei.
On Sunday, Malacañang announced that Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita wrote Speaker Prospero Nograles, maintaining the Palace position on the proposed baselines law which is to "enclose the main archipelago within the baselines and treat the Kalayaan Group of Islands (KGI) as a regime of islands.''
In his letter dated April 4, Ermita told Nograles that the Philippines was not giving up its sovereignty over the KGI and Scarborough Shoal -- areas within the Spratly Islands being claimed by six nations that included the Philippines -- by not enclosing them within the archipelagic baselines.
Treating the KGI and Scarborough Shoal as a "regime of islands'' would be consistent with the fact that they are integral parts of an archipelagic Philippines, according to Ermita.
"The Executive's position is consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos), which provides that an archipelagic state, such as the Philippines, may consist wholly of one or more archipelagos and may include other islands,'' Ermita told Nograles.
"As an archipelagic state, our archipelagic baselines should be drawn along the general configuration of the archipelago, while the other islands shall have normal baselines,'' said Ermita, who chairs the Commission on Maritime and Ocean Affairs.
Ermita said that the Palace position would not diminish its exclusive economic zone or continental shelf.
The Palace position, he said, was firmed up after a series of inter-departmental discussions and consultations with legal luminaries on international law.
During last Friday's closed-door meeting of President Macapagal-Arroyo, the Cabinet and congressmen at the Palace, Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez said that they discussed "what should be the baselines as defined by us within the framework of Unclos.''
"(The House bill) wants us to enclose the Philippine archipelago the Spratlys ... and areas now occupied by China,'' Gonzalez said in a phone interview.
"We risked going to war with China. Are we ready for it?'' he said of the country passing the proposed Baselines Law.
Gonzalez said the Palace still did not know how the House would react to its position on the matter.
But he hoped the reaction would be "positive'' as he conceded that it would not be easy to just withdraw a bill already passed on second reading.
"We have to find a way to go about it,'' Gonzalez said, noting that what Malacañang wanted was a "modification'' of the current House bill.
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