Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr on Friday urged Asian nations at odds over disputed islands in the South China and East China seas to find a way to draw up resource-sharing pacts.
Australia has remained neutral amid tensions between China and its regional neighbours, including Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines.
But Carr told a Washington think-tank that “60 or 70 per cent of our merchandise trade goes through the South China Sea and therefore we have interest in the peaceful resolution of these disputes.”
Beijing has grown increasingly assertive in recent years in claiming islands and waters even without effective control of them -- in some cases hundreds of miles from the Chinese mainland and close to rival claimants’ coasts.
Tensions have spiked amid hopes that some of the underwater areas might contain a wealth of oil and gas.
China-Japan ties have especially soured as the two sides spar over disputed islands in the East China Sea, which Tokyo controls as the Senkakus but Beijing claims as the Diaoyus.