The future stability of the Asia-Pacific region depends on the success of negotiating an Asean code of conduct on maritime claims, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Monday. The United States has been increasingly uneasy at what it sees as China’s effort to gain creeping control over waters in the Asia-Pacific, including its Nov. 23 declaration of an air defense identification zone in an area of the East China Sea that includes islands at the center of a dispute with Japan. Kerry was speaking in the Indonesian capital during a trip to Asia and the Middle East. —Reuters