THE HAGUE, June 27 (Xinhua) -- The disputes over the South China Sea between China and the Philippines are not appropriate for a judicial settlement or arbitration, experts said Monday.
An arbitral tribunal's decision to allow a case unilaterally initiated by the Philippines is also highly questionable, according to a group of leading experts on international law who concluded a seminar here.
"Because there are so many possible choices regarding how to settle the claims, it will be difficult for a court or an arbitral tribunal to make a proper decision," said Sienho Yee, chief expert at the Institute of Boundary and Ocean Studies of Wuhan University, who presented a conclusion of some 30 experts during a press briefing.
"We also heard the positions by the experts that the tribunal seemed to be manipulating words in its decision (on jurisdiction)," Yee said, noting that the tribunal did not respect China's explicit right to exclude territorial and delimitation disputes written in the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
Read the full story at Xinhua