TNAG-1625-FCO40-2239-Relations-between-Hong-Kong-and-China-1987 — Page 39

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article in the People's Daily of 5 June 1956 refers to a statement by the Philippine Ministry of Foreign Affairs in July 1946 "showing interest in the Nansha Islands". Reference is also made to a further statement on the subject of May 1950 which is corroborated by other evidence available here. When HMS Dampier visited Itu Aba in 1951 it found an ex-American P.T. boat flying the Philippine flag. The Captain stated he was employed in carrying fish from Palawan to Manila. They were on a cruise to Brown Bank (Lat.10040'N, Long,117022'E) and had lost their way. They had stayed one night on Itu Aba to repair engines. Two other similar boats departed hurriedly from the area after they had been sighted by HMS Dampier.

35. The question was raised again in 1956 when Mr Tomas Cloma, a Philippine citizen, claimed ownership "based on rights of discovery and/ or occupation" to the group within the area of

A

C

Lat.11950' Lat.10030

E

Lat. 7°40'

Long.114010'

Long.1180 Long.1130

B

D

F

Long.1180

Long.1160

Lat.11050' Lat. 7°40'

Lat. 8°35' Long.111050'

(see map 1). After the Chinese Government had reiterated their claims, Mr Cloma was reported by the British Embassy "to have excluded Spratly Islands from his own claim, maintaining it by implication for Itu Aba and others" (a strange remark). Later he was reported as whittling the claim. down "to a chain of islets, shoals and reefs only 48 miles west of Palawan, and not forming part of the Spratly group". The British Embassy did not state what the current definition of the Spratly group in the Philippines was then. It is hard to believe that the definition given in a letter from the British Embassy to the FCO in July 1971 (all islands within 114 and 115 parallels of longitude and 10 and 11 parallels of latitude) is completely accurate. In a letter to Mr Cloma in February 1957 the Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs distinguished between: a) res nullius thing with "Freedom land" (the name Mr Cloma gave to the islands claimed by him in 1956) except b) the seven-island group known internationally as the Spratlys (probably a reference to the seven islands claimed by the French in 1933). It considered these latter were under "de facto Trusteeship of the victorious Allied Powers" as a result of the 1951 peace treaty. This raises the question what area did Japan give up in 1951? Was it the area of Shinnan Gunto (see para 17 and map 1)? Further questions can also be asked about the validity of the legal reasoning in this case.

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36. Apart from this position which the Philippine Government has maintained, she has also (in a presidential proclamation 370 of 1968) under the 1949 Philippine Petroleum Act (1) declared that all mineral and

(1) Article 3 of the Act states "All natural deposits or occurrences of petroleum or natural gas... found in ... the territorial waters or on the continental shelf, or its analogue in an archipelago, seaward from the shores of the Philippines which are not within the territories of other countries, belong to the State, inalienably and imprescriptibly."

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