By Fel V. Maragay

SENATE President Juan Ponce Enrile has challenged China and Vietnam to lodge their complaints before the United Nations if they really believe that Congress erred in drafting the Archipelagic Baselines bill which treats the Kalayaan Islands Group and the Scarborough Shoal as “a regime of islands under the Republic of the Philippines.”

“Essentially, all these things will be resolved through the UN,” he said. “It is only the UN that can determine whether we went overboard in delineating our baselines law,” Enrile said.

Senator Rodolfo Biazon, chairman of the committee on national defense and security, said that even the United States recognizes that Kalayaan Islands belong to the Philippines.

Biazon said US recognition of this position was spelled through an official statement of the State Department in answer to his inquiry in l999 whether the Kalayaan Islands were covered by the Mutual Defense Treaty.

Biazon said Hubbard’s reply was tantamount to an explicit US recognition of Philippine sovereignty over the Kalayaan Islands. “It was because of the US reply that I voted in favor to ratify the VFA,” he said.

Enrile said the objections from Beijing and Hanoi should not be a cause for alarm as these were “expected” and a “natural reaction.” He said the two claimant-countries felt that” if they will not say anything, their silence will mean consent,”

“All these conflicts about this issue on the Kalayaan Islands, Scarborough Shoal and other islands in the South China Sea can be resolved only by negotiation through under the UN Charter,” he told radio station dzBB.

“The main principle that prevails is the peaceful settlement of international disputes... And if these are not settled, war may be possible. But we are constrained from going to war,” he added.

Enrile said Congress could have put the Kalayaan Islands and Scarborough Islands within the baselines to bolster the Philippine territorial claim. But he said that Congress and Malacañang opted to treat them as regime of islands to avoid provocation of other claimant-countries.

He said this approach adopted by Congress was considered the most compliant with the UN convention on the law of the sea.

Critics of the baseline bill may question the constitutionality of the measure before the Supreme Court, Enrile said.

“If they really believe what they are saying, let them go to the Supreme Court and make a comic of themselves,” Enrile said.