The workshop, considered “purely a scientific forum,” attracted more than 150 scholars and leading thinkers from various countries, including China, aiming to create a research network on East Sea issues and make proposals for cooperation mechanisms in the area.

Dr. Mark Valencia, a maritime policy analyst from the East West Center in Hawaii, US, said on the sideline of the conference that the situation in the East Sea is “unpredictable” and complicated by issues of national sovereignty.

The US expert noted that would be possible for Vietnam to put the East Sea issue on the agenda when it chairs ASEAN again in 2010. However, that would require lobbying other countries, said Valencia.

“They did come up with a declaration,” Valencia said, referring to the 1992 adoption of the “ASEAN Declaration on the South China Sea.”

The question now, he said, is whether countries can work to strengthen the agreement.

Vietnam submitted a report to the UN Secretary General on its Outer Limits of the Continental Shelf in May this year. China later also attached a map stating its claims to some 80 percent of the East Sea.

On May 8, Vietnam’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations sent another note to the UN Secretary-General refuting the claim and the map submitted by China.

On the same day, the Vietnamese Foreign Affairs Ministry then-spokesman Le Dung told a press conference that Vietnam held incontrovertible sovereignty over the Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelagoes, saying they were Vietnamese territory.

“China’s claim on the map attached to its diplomatic note is null and void as it has no legal, historical and factual ground,” Dung said.

Reported by Huong Le