PM says code of conduct could be agreed to and Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, may visit Australia this year

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Malcolm Turnbull says there is now “cautious optimism” that a code of conduct can be reached in the hotly disputed region of the South China Sea, despite the dangerous flashpoint overshadowing a regional meeting of Asian leaders in Laos.

The prime minister told reporters before a meeting with the Chinese premier, Li Keqiang, on Thursday that progress was slow to resolve the disputes between regional players “but there is cautious optimism that agreement can be reached on a code of conduct”.

The prime minister’s office also said in Laos it had been agreed that Indonesia’s president, Joko Widodo, would visit Australia soon, possibly this year, but no date had been decided.

Turnbull said the South China Sea decision in The Hague in July – where an international tribunal upheld a complaint by the Philippines over China’s aggressive actions in the region – was “a fact, it is a reality”.

China has refused to accept the decision. But, according to news reports from the Philippines, China has agreed to work towards a code of conduct to settle territorial disputes peacefully.

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According to those reports, the president of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, has signalled he is prepared to hold talks with China to settle the dispute and he has asked the former president Fidel Ramos to hold “backchannel talks” with Chinese officials.

Turnbull called again for cool heads on Thursday, saying the Australian government “strongly encouraged agreement on the code of conduct”.

The prime minister told reporters he’d had one private conversation with Duterte – who caused a diplomatic storm by branding the US president, Barack Obama, the “son of a whore” before their planned bilateral meeting in Laos – and hoped to have another conversation with him late on Thursday.

Turnbull said it was critically important that claimants in the South China Sea resolved their disputation between themselves.

The Australian prime minister’s remarks before his meeting with the Chinese premier followed talks earlier in the day with Widodo, which centred on a trade deal the government wants to pursue with Jakarta and enhanced security cooperation in the region.

Turnbull said the Indonesian president had given a strong signal he wanted to move the trade deal along and he said, when it came to dealing with the threat of terrorism, the two leaders had agreed “tolerance is one of the major weapons against violent extremism”.

The prime minister told reporters leaders had also responded positively to an offer he made at a dinner on Wednesday night to host an Asean summit in Australia in 2018.