The Philippine government said over the weekend that it has asked a United Nations body to formally recognize its right to the undersea continental seabed extending from its western coast outward to the South China Sea, a region that covers the hotly contested Spratly group of islands, islets and reefs. If granted, that would give Manila the exclusive right to exploit undersea resources there.
The undersea continental shelf claimed by the Philippines could overlap with those claimed by other coastal states such as Vietnam, which lies across the strategic seaway. Philippine officials expressed their readiness to hold talks to resolve such issues based on the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the international treaty that provides legal guidelines to define coastal states’ territorial waters.
