Singapore supports Indonesia's draft on S China Sea dispute

Singapore's Foreign Minister K. Shanmugam supported the zero draft of Code of Conduct (COC) on the South China Sea proposed by Indonesia to help settle the maritime territorial dispute, local media reported Thursday.

"It's a very useful framework structure and a lot of work and effort has gone to it and we thank Indonesia for that," Shanmugam said after a joint commission meeting with Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa in Yogyakarta on Wednesday.

Indonesia took the initiative to promulgate a COC comprising of confidence building and conflict prevention measures, should conflict or an incident arise, to prevent situations from worsening.

The COC draft was circulated to ASEAN foreign ministers during their meeting at the UN General Assembly in New York earlier in October.

Shanmugam said that the zero draft of COC was a good start and praised Indonesia's efforts to find peaceful solution to the territorial dispute which involves six countries, four of which are ASEAN member states.

Marty said that the COC draft needed to be discussed and measured so that it fits accordingly. "We want to trigger a momentum, but on the other hand we cannot impose an idea," he said, adding that representatives of ASEAN and China will meet in Thailand next week to put forth their ideas on the zero draft COC.

The relationship of Indonesia and neighboring country of Singapore has run well so far and always experienced improvement especially in trade and investment, the Jakarta Post reported.

Marty said that in term of investment, Singapore is the country with the biggest investment value in Indonesia, followed by China and Japan. Singapore's investment in 2011 was 5.1 billion U.S. dollars, mostly in the industrial sector.

As of September 2012, Singapore's investment in Indonesia has reached 3.6 billion U.S. dollars and by the end of this year it is expected to be above or at least the same as last year's.