International experts attending a two-day workshop on the East Sea in Hanoi late last week called on ASEAN to take a larger leading role in solving territorial disputes in the region.

At the two-day conference that ended Friday, scholars asked ASEAN to help formalize the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties (DOC) in the East Sea, which was issued in 2002.

“What you’ve got know is that the status quo that is leaking,” said Mark Valencia, a marine policy analyst from the East West Centre in Hawaii, US. “It’s like having a peace boat and trying to sail it across the [East Sea] and conflicts could break out before the boat reaches the other side.”

On Friday, Vietnamese government spokesperson Nguyen Phuong Nga again emphasized Vietnam’s sovereignty over the Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelagoes amid continuing disputes with neighboring China over ownership of the islands.

The East Sea, an area that spans nearly 4 million square kilometers and is believed to be rich in oil and other natural resources, is of great strategic importance.

Scholars agreed that the situation in the area is getting more complicated as some countries’ thirst for energy grows and issues of national sovereignty intensify.

Talks on a joint Code of Conduct have not been sealed as China has repeatedly stated its preference for a bilateral dialogue rather than a multilateral solution to the dispute in the East Sea.

Valencia, among the leading thinkers who gathered in Hanoi to discuss East Sea issues, noted that a code of conduct is critical “to hold China and other countries to the conditions.”

ASEAN has made great progress in having China negotiate with the group as a bloc, he said, but countries needed to work to strengthen the agreement, a task of particular concern for Vietnam when it chairs ASEAN again in 2010, he said.

Rodolfo Severino, head of the ASEAN Studies Centre Institute of Southeast Asia Studies, said ASEAN countries should stick together to make sure that DOC is respected because “incidents could happen” as countries continue making new claims.

Severino noted that the Chinese has not explained its 1947 map that claims almost the entire East Sea and its islands, an idea echoed by Tran Cong Truc, the former head of the Government Border Committee.

Truc said even among Chinese scholars there has not been a full agreement on map in which China claims more than 80 percent of the sea.

Nazery Khalid, a senior fellow at the Center for Maritime Economics and Industry, said as chair of ASEAN Vietnam should take actions toward trying to bring parties into further negotiations.

The disputes won’t be resolved in a short-term period, he said, but countries must look forward to finding a solution instead being dragged into further claims.

At the concluding remarks, Duong Van Quang, president of the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam, called for more gatherings of scholars to discuss international issues affecting the security of the region.

“That will allow us to present our findings and suggestions to deal with complex international issues,” he said. “And perhaps it will help policy makers gain a better and more comprehensive understanding of these issues, which sometimes they can’t discuss in such an open and frank manner.”