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Beijing is stoking
tensions in South China Sea: Hanoi
Reuters, HANOI
Vietnam said yesterday China was increasing regional tensions and said its navy
would do everything necessary to protect its territorial integrity after Chinese
patrol boats interfered with a Vietnamese oil and gas survey ship in the South
China Sea.
The remarks appeared to raise the stakes in the latest row over long-simmering
conflicting maritime claims just days before a regional defense summit in
Singapore and highlight nervousness about Chinaˇ¦s growing assertiveness in the
region.
In a rare weekend news conference, Vietnamese officials rejected Chinaˇ¦s claims
that the Vietnamese ship conducting a seismic survey was in Chinese waters. The
incident happened about 120km off the south-central coast of Vietnam and about
600km south of Chinaˇ¦s Hainan Island.
ˇ§The Vietnamese navy will do everything necessary to firmly protect peace and
the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of Vietnam,ˇ¨ Vietnamese
Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Nguyen Phuong Nga said.
Do Van Hau, deputy chief executive of state oil and gas group Petrovietnam,
which was operating the ship, said one of three Chinese patrol vessels on the
scene intentionally cut a submerged cable towed by the ship, the Binh Minh 02.
It was not the first time Chinese ships had cut cables of Vietnamese survey
boats, he said.
The Chinese boats then threatened the Vietnamese ship with violence, he added
without elaborating.
Taiwan, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei all claim
territories in the South China Sea, which cover an important shipping route and
are thought to hold untapped oil and gas reserves.
Chinaˇ¦s claim is by far the largest, forming a vast U-shape over most of the
seaˇ¦s 1.7 million square kilometers, including the Spratly Islands («n¨F¸s®q) and
Paracel Islands (¦č¨F¸s®q).
China blamed Vietnam on Saturday for the incident, saying such Vietnamese oil
and gas operations undermined Chinaˇ¦s interests and jurisdictional rights.
Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Jiang Yu («¸·ě) said the behaviour
of ˇ§the relevant Chinese departmentsˇ¨ in the incident was normal.
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