MANILA — Indonesia's top diplomat Wednesday embarked on an emergency swing through Southeast Asia to try to end disagreements over territorial rifts in the South China Sea and push for a new pact aimed at avoiding future clashes. Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said he met his Philippine counterpart, Albert del Rosario, in Manila and would fly to other Southeast Asian nations to try to ease the discord and prevent further damage to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Foreign ministers of the 10-nation bloc failed to issue a concluding joint statement after their annual meeting in Phnom Penh last week when host Cambodia rejected a proposal by the Philippines and Vietnam to mention their separate territorial disputes with China in the statement. The absence of a post-conference statement was unprecedented in ASEAN's 45-year history and underscored the divisions within the group over the handling of the South China Sea disputes, which involve four of its members — Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. The four, along with China and Taiwan, have been contesting ownership of potentially oil- and gas-rich territories for years and recent spats have raised new tensions and alarm in the region. — AP
