Reuters, Kuala Lumpur :US Secretary of State John Kerry expressed his concern about China’s land reclamation and construction on man-made islands in the disputed South China Sea during talks with his Chinese counterpart on Wednesday, a senior State Department official said.Kerry made the remarks to Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Kuala Lumpur on the sidelines of meetings involving the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), where tensions in the South China Sea have taken center stage.The official said Kerry told Wang that while Washington did not take a position on sovereignty claims in the strategic waterway, it wanted to see them resolved peacefully and in accordance with international law.Kerry also reiterated U.S. concerns over the “militarization” of features on the Chinese-held islands in the Spratly archipelago of the South China Sea, the official added.”He encouraged China, along with the other claimants, to halt problematic actions in order to create space for diplomacy,” the official said.In brief remarks to reporters after his talks with Kerry, Wang said China would pursue “peaceful discussions” to resolve the South China Sea dispute. He did not elaborate.Recent satellite images show China has almost finished building a 3,000-metre-long (10,000-foot) airstrip on one of its seven new islands in the Spratlys.The airstrip will be long enough to accommodate most Chinese military aircraft, security experts have said, giving Beijing greater reach into the heart of maritime Southeast Asia.China claims most of the South China Sea, through which $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have overlapping claims.China had said it did not want the South China Sea dispute raised at this week’s ASEAN meetings, but some ministers, including from host Malaysia, rebuffed that call, saying the issue was too important to ignore.In a statement, Japan’s senior vice foreign minister Minoru Kiuchi “voiced deep concern over unilateral actions that change the status quo and heighten tensions in the South China Sea, including large-scale land reclamation, the construction of outposts and their use for military purposes.”Despite strong public comments by several Southeast Asian ministers about the need to reduce tensions, the grouping had yet to issue a customary communiqué following annual talks between its foreign ministers on Tuesday.”On the South China Sea, I think we are probably nearing a formulation,” said Jakkrit Srivali, director-general of the ASEAN department at Thailand’s Foreign Affairs Ministry.Other issues had also held up the statement, he said without elaborating. A communiqué was expected at the end of joint meetings between ASEAN, the United States, China, Japan and other countries on Thursday, senior officials said.
