REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, MANILA - Vietnamese and Philippine naval personnel played football, volleyball and tug of war Sunday in a rare display of camaraderie in the South China Sea, where their territorial rifts with China have flared alarmingly.

During the games, each team included Vietnamese and Filipinos to underscore the friendly nature of the event, Philippine navy spokesman Gerald Fabic said. "We're trying to set an example," he said. "We want to show that there can be other approaches to the disputes that can in fact ease the tensions."

The rare event aimed "to foster camaraderie and friendly relations between the two nations," the two navies said, adding that it was "proof that disputes do not hinder development of practical and tangible cooperation."

"This also serves as a model of cooperation for the other navies to emulate," they said.

The daylong sports festival was held on Vietnamese-occupied Southwest Cay Island and also included cultural presentations. Philippine officials said about 40 Filipino navy personnel sailed by boat to the island, bringing local delicacies such as rice cakes.

China, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam have overlapping claims in the Spratlys, a group of mostly barren islands, reefs and atolls that are believed to be sitting atop oil and natural gas deposits and straddle some of the world's most traversed sea lanes.

Although they're technically rivals, Vietnam and the Philippines recently have discussed ways to cooperate to ease tensions in the disputed waters, where both have been engaged in dangerous standoffs with China. Southwest Cay Island, which the Philippines also claims and calls Pugad, used to be occupied by Filipino troops but was seized by Vietnamese forces in the 1970s.

China, which claims it has had sovereign rights over virtually the entire South China Sea since ancient times, has protested any military activity in the area other than its own. Beijing has so far ignored a call by the United States and other governments for it to define the limits of its claims.

Philippine Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio, who has done extensive studies on the South China Sea disputes, said in a Manila forum Friday that dozens of official and unofficial Chinese maps produced for nearly a century until the early 1900s showed Hainan Island as China's southernmost territory, not the South China Sea, which lies beyond that point. The Chinese Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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