US President Barack Obama warned China’s top diplomat on Thursday that both sides must not repeat their standoff at sea, while the US navy dispatched destroyers to escort future surveillance voyages.
Obama met Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi (楊潔篪) following sharp exchanges between Beijing and Washington over the incident involving a US ship and Chinese vessels last Sunday, and also over human rights in Tibet.
The talks came as major powers jostled ahead of next month’s G20 economic crisis summit in London and with North Korea threatening to launch a satellite seen by Washington as a missile test in disguise.
Obama, making his first foray into Sino-US diplomacy, told Yang it was important to raise the level and frequency of military dialogue between the two sides to “avoid future incidents,” the White House said.
US National Security Advisor James Jones meanwhile raised the standoff between the US survey ship Impeccable and Chinese vessels in the South China Sea.
The US government said Chinese boats moved directly in front of the Navy ship, forcing it into evasive action. China said the US ship was spying.
A Washington defense official said the US decided to bolster surveillance patrols in the area with destroyers.
“Right now they are going to escort these types of ships for the foreseeable future,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A day after Sunday’s incident, the US destroyer Chung-Hoon accompanied Impeccable — an unarmed ship designed to track submarines with sonar — in the same area, the official said.
Obama also raised the issue of Tibet, the cause of early wrangles in his administration’s relationship with Beijing.
“On human rights, the president noted that the promotion of human rights is an essential aspect of US global foreign policy,” the White House statement said. “The President expressed his hope there would be progress in the dialogue between the Chinese government and the Dalai Lama’s representatives.”
At a lunch with a US think tank, however, Yang urged the US to “respect” Beijing’s position on Tibet.
“Tibet is an inalienable part of China’s territory and Tibetan affairs are exclusively China’s internal affairs,” Yang told a closed-door meeting at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I hope that people from various sectors in the United States will appreciate these facts and understand and respect the Chinese people’s position of upholding state sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
The White House and State Department had earlier expressed concern about the human rights situation in Tibet, prompting strongly worded complaints from Beijing.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS