ANKARA

The Philippines on Saturday submitted a claim with the UN to an extended continental shelf (ECS) in the South China Sea, the country's Foreign Ministry said.

In a statement, the ministry said the country's mission at the UN submitted information to the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf to register the country's entitlement to an extended continental shelf in the West Palawan region in the South China Sea.

"Under article 76 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), a coastal State such as the Philippines is entitled to establish the outer limits of its continental shelf comprising the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas extending beyond 200 nautical miles (NM) but not to exceed 350 NM from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured," it said.

Manila and Beijing have witnessed bilateral relations spiral down due to a longstanding dispute over territory in the South China Sea.

Beijing claims vast maritime territory in the South China Sea under its so-called nine-dash line, which The Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration said in 2016 has no legal basis under international law.

However, China has rejected the ruling, saying that it is not valid, and has been in negotiations with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations since 2002 for a code of conduct for the disputed sea.

The Philippines' Foreign Ministry Assistant Secretary for Maritime and Ocean Affairs Marshall Louis Alferez said the submission of his country to the UN is a declaration not only of Manila's maritime entitlements under the UNCLOS but also of the country's commitment to the responsible application of its processes.

“Incidents in the waters tend to overshadow the importance of what lies beneath,” he said.

Earlier this month, at the Shangri-la Dialogue in Singapore, the Philippines' President Ferdinand Marcos Jr said: “If by a willful act a Filipino -- not only serviceman but even Filipino citizen -- is killed … that is what I think very, very close to what we define as an act of war and therefore we will respond accordingly."

Later, China said his comments were designed to “deliberately distort and hype up the maritime situation.”

*Writing by Islamuddin Sajid