The landmark arbitral tribunal ruling on the South China Sea is "binding", United States President Barack Obama stressed during a summit with Asean leaders.
"I recognise this raises tensions, but I also look forward to discussing how we can constructively move forward together to lower tensions and promote diplomacy and regional stability," he said at the annual Asean-US Summit yesterday.
Asean leaders in Vientiane this week for a series of meetings with their regional counterparts had been cautious about mentioning the July 12 ruling on a case initiated by the Philippines over its overlapping territorial claims with China.
According to Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's spokesman Martin Andanar, no Asean leader asked China to comply with the ruling during the Asean-China Summit on Wednesday.
Indeed, a joint statement adopted after that summit did not mention the ruling.
Apart from the Philippines, three other Asean states - Vietnam, Brunei and Malaysia - also lay claim to parts of the South China Sea.
The ruling by the arbitral tribunal in The Hague effectively invalidated what China calls its historical rights over most of the sea, and further admonished it for conducting vast reclamation work in contested waters to bolster its claims.
Beijing has rejected the ruling as a farce, and Manila has not actively tried to push its legal claim while Mr Duterte attempts to engineer a face-saving "soft landing" for both countries.
However, before the Asean-China Summit, the Philippines' Defence Ministry released photographs and a map that it said showed more Chinese ships near the contested Scarborough Shoal, raising fears reclamation works would also be conducted there.
According to a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement, Premier Li Keqiang told Asean leaders on Wednesday that China was willing to work with them in "dispelling interference... and properly handling the South China Sea issue".
The remarks are widely known to be directed at the US, which has sent its ships close to China's reclaimed islands in what it calls freedom of navigation operations.
Meanwhile, a Xinhua news agency commentary yesterday called Mr Obama's US rebalance to Asia a "narrow-minded scheme orchestrated to maintain his country's hegemony and corrosive to the region's peace and stability".
Mr Obama said yesterday: "With respect to maritime issues, we'll continue to work to ensure that disputes are resolved peacefully, including in the South China Sea." The arbitration ruling "helped clarify maritime rights in the region".
Asean, he said, is "key" to the US rebalance to the Asia-Pacific policy. "We have forged a strategic partnership. The US is committed to building on this solid foundation."
Speaking at the same summit, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said he welcomed the US' "benign and positive" presence in the Asia-Pacific, according to Mr Lee's press secretary Chang Li Lin.
Mr Lee said the US had helped build "a regional order where all countries big and small play by the same rules, compete and resolve their disputes peacefully, including in the South China Sea".
Both claimant and non-claimant states in the South China Sea share fundamental interests in maintaining peace and stability and peaceful resolution of disputes in accordance with international law, he said. Mr Lee also said he hoped the US would remain as committed to Asean under its future president.
