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.
When Shanghai-based designer Guo Qingshan posted a vacation photo on Valentine’s Day and captioned it “Puppy Mountain,” it became a sensation in China and even created a tourist destination. Guo had gone on a hike while visiting his hometown of Yichang in central China’s Hubei Province late last month. When reviewing the photographs, he saw something he had not noticed before: A mountain shaped like a dog’s head rested on the ground next to the Yangtze River, its snout perched at the water’s edge. “It was so magical and cute. I was so excited and happy when I discovered it,” Guo said.
Chinese authorities said they began live-fire exercises in the Gulf of Tonkin on Monday, only days after Vietnam announced a new line marking what it considers its territory in the body of water between the nations. The Chinese Maritime Safety Administration said the exercises would be focused on the Beibu Gulf area, closer to the Chinese side of the Gulf of Tonkin, and would run until tomorrow evening. It gave no further details, but the drills follow an announcement last week by Vietnam establishing a baseline used to calculate the width of its territorial waters in the Gulf of Tonkin. State-run Vietnam News
TURNAROUND: The Liberal Party had trailed the Conservatives by a wide margin, but that was before Trump threatened to make Canada the US’ 51st state Canada’s ruling Liberals, who a few weeks ago looked certain to lose an election this year, are mounting a major comeback amid the threat of US tariffs and are tied with their rival Conservatives, according to three new polls. An Ipsos survey released late on Tuesday showed that the left-leaning Liberals have 38 percent public support and the official opposition center-right Conservatives have 36 percent. The Liberals have overturned a 26-point deficit in six weeks, and run advertisements comparing the Conservative leader to Trump. The Conservative strategy had long been to attack unpopular Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but last month he
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
RSS