MANILA, April 4 (Xinhua) -- China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have made progress in talks on the framework of the Code of Conduct(COC) in the South China Sea, Philippines' top diplomat said Tuesday.
"We have made good progress on coming up with a framework of the COC with China. From a scale of 1 to 10, we are at the upper level. And we are starting from zero in January," Philippine Acting Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo told a forum.
"There have been a number of elements agreed and we would definitely have a framework on which to embark on a serious of negotiations on a code of conduct," he added at the forum organized by the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines.
Once the framework is agreed, it would then be possible to begin discussions on the code that can be used to manage the sea dispute peacefully, he said.
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