Enrile backs dropping of Spratlys from baseline

BY DENNIS GADIL

SEN. Juan Ponce Enrile yesterday said the Spratlys or Kalayaan Island Group (KIG) should be dropped from any proposed bill redefining the country’s archipelagic baseline.

"As far as the baseline is concerned, you cannot include that (Spratlys) because that is not yet a settled territory of the Philippines. We claim it but other countries dispute it," he said.

Sen. Edgardo Angara, in the Senate’s version of the baseline bill he filed on Wednesday, included the KIG in the country’s national territory.

Angara said the proposed Archipelagic Baseline Law of the Philippines has to be acted upon with urgency because the country might fail to claim the extended continental shelf, of which Kalayaan is a part, before the expiry of deadline of the United Nations Convention on the Law and the Seas in May 2009.

He said that should the Philippines fail to meet the Unclos deadline, the extended continental shelf areas which the country is claiming can either be considered part of the International Seabed Area, or the Common Heritage of Mankind, or be awarded to a neighboring state.

Under the 1982 Unclos, archipelagic nations such as the Philippines must have a law defining its baselines and provide supporting scientific data within a period of 10 years from May 13, 1999.

Unclos had also established the 12-mile nautical territorial sea, the 24-mile contiguous zone and the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone as the limits of the archipelagic jurisdiction.

Angara said that losing the country’s extended continental shelf claim "will have disastrous effects as the same contains mineral resources... as well as living organisms belonging to the sedentary species which are primarily raw materials for pharmaceutical products."

Malacañang denied that it was pressured by China into excluding the KIG and the Scarborough Shoal from the country’s archipelagic baselines.

"There is no such pressure coming from China that I know. I don’t know his basis for saying such. There was no statement coursed through the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA)... We are only doing what we think is to our best interest," Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said.

Senate minority leader Aquilino Pimentel Tuesday said excluding the KIG and Scarborough Shoal as proposed by Malacañang from the archipelagic baseline is "tragic if not, treasonous."

He added it is the duty of President Arroyo to assert the country’s territorial claims forcefully but peacefully.

He said the Palace efforts to block the bill’s passage only fuels suspicion that the Arroyo government is wary of offending China due to its offer of economic and business packages alongside soft loans.

Ermita said the Baselines Bill was not included in the agenda of the Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council (Ledac) last Tuesday as the Senate and the House have not agreed on a position on the issue.

"It is such an important bill. We want to be sure that both chambers would have unanimity of purpose...We want to have a consensus," he said.

He said the separate Ledac meeting exclusively for the baselines issue would be held in May.

Ermita said the passage of House Bill 3216 was postponed Monday because Speaker Prospero Nograles Jr. wanted to have consultations with the Senate "before the House makes a final push on HB 3216."

Ermita said the KIG and Scarborough Shoal "are definitely ours" based on a directive of Ferdinand Marcos. "Pinangalanan na natin iyan. Sila (China and Vietnam) nga ang naghahabol," he added. – With Regina Bengco