Sea row: Manila warns Beijing on ‘irritant’ acts

Bloomberg

The Philippines asked China to refrain from acts that could disrupt the two nations’ improving relations amid simmering tension in the South China Sea.
“China should avoid performing acts that will place at risk the Filipino fishermen fishing in the disputed areas and at the same time cause irritants that will disrupt the current friendly relations,” President Rodrigo Duterte’s spokesman Salvador Panelo said in a statement.
The warning follows comments from China’s foreign ministry earlier, which said it hopes “non-littoral states will refrain from stirring up trouble in the calm waters of the South China Sea.” The Southeast Asian nation on the same day concluded its annual military drills with the US, which sent a fighter-jet-carrying warship for the first time.
Duterte, in a rare rebuke of China, earlier this month told Beijing to “lay off”
from the Philippines-occupied Thitu Island in the South China Sea.