THE Philippines has made a “partial claim” to its extended continental shelf before the United Nations, but has excluded the disputed Kalayaan Island Group or Spratlys and Scarborough Shoal “in consideration of other claimant-countries,” an official said yesterday.

The Philippines only included Benham Rise, an extinct volcano ridge northeast of Luzon, in its claim before the Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in New York on April 8, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said.

“Our Permanent Representative to the UN, Ambassador [Hilario] Davide, has already submitted our baselines and our claim for the extended continental shelf,” Ermita said.

“We did not include the Spratlys and Scarborough because these are disputed areas. For Spratlys alone there are about five other claimant-countries, and we do not want to delay our submission so we made a partial claim.”

The Philippines made its claim ahead of the May 13 deadline for states to submit claims over their extended continental shelves.

“Our partial submission does not mean we are giving up on our claims on the other disputed areas,” Ermita said.

Benham Rise is a rich spawning ground, while the Spratly Islands and Scarborough Shoal are believed to contain oil, natural gas, minerals and polymetals.

The Spratlys are also being claimed by China, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei.

Davide’s paper says the Philippines made the partial claim “… to avoid creating or provoking maritime-boundary disputes where there are none[,] or exacerbating them where they may exist in areas where maritime boundaries have not yet been delimited between opposite or adjacent coastal states.”

A country’s extended continental shelf are areas beyond the 200 nautical mile border set by the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

President Arroyo last month signed the Baseline Law, which treats the Spratly Islands and the Scarborough Shoal as “regime of islands under the Republic of the Philippines.” Joyce Pangco Pañares