The move is part of a plan by Manila to ease the tensions with China and other claimants.
The Philippines and Vietnam have accused China this year of disrupting their oil exploration activities in the Spratlys and Paracel Islands. Bejing claims the entire South China Sea as its own.
Foreign Affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez said Friday that legal experts from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations will meet in Manila in mid-September to tackle the initiative.
Beijing has said it favors bilateral negotiations with individual claimants.
The Philippine proposal asserts that not the whole South China Sea is disputed. It says the disputes are limited to the rocks, atolls and low-tide elevations in the Spratlys and Paracels as well as their limited adjacent waters.
The Spratlys are claimed in part or in whole by China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan. Vietnam and China have overlapping claims over the Paracels.
A copy of the Philippine paper says claimant countries could undertake joint activities in the disputed “enclave,” which would be demilitarized.
A joint working committee would be established to manage the enclave. Such activities could include development and marine scientific research and would be governed by a code of conduct and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, according to the proposal.
Outside of the enclave, states along the semi-enclosed sea could still conduct other joint activities, including search-and-rescue operations and activities related to salvaging oil spills, while exercising their sovereign rights over those waters, it said.
Hernandez said his government is hoping that legal experts would back the plan so it can be elevated to ASEAN senior officials and ministers. He said that Philippines hopes China would agree to the proposal.
