Asean urges China to discuss rows

Southeast Asian leaders yesterday called for urgent talks with China to ensure that increasingly tense territorial disputes over the South China Sea did not escalate into violence.
The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) wrapped up a two-day summit in Brunei with a chairman's statement in which they emphasised the importance of "peace, stability and maritime security in the region".
Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiahtold reporters after the summit that the leaders wanted to "urgently work on a code of conduct" with China aimed at defusing tensions.
The other key focus at the summit was pushing forward plans to create a single market for Southeast Asia and its 600 million people -- known as the Asean Economic Community -- by 2015.
However the flashpoint South China Sea issue dominated the meeting, amid growing concern among some Southeast Asian countries over China's increasing aggression in laying claim to the waters.
China says it has sovereign rights to nearly all of the South China Sea, which is believed to sit atop huge deposits of oil and gas. It is also home to some of the world's busiest shipping lanes and richest fishing grounds.
Asean members the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei, as well as Taiwan, also claim parts of the sea.
The competing claims have for decades made the area one of Asia's potential powder kegs for military conflict.
Tensions have risen again in recent years as China has used increasingly aggressive diplomatic and military tactics to assert its authority in the disputed territory.