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.
PARLIAMENT CHAOS: Police forcibly removed Brazilian Deputy Glauber Braga after he called the legislation part of a ‘coup offensive’ and occupied the speaker’s chair Brazil’s lower house of Congress early yesterday approved a bill that could slash former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence for plotting a coup, after efforts by a lawmaker to disrupt the proceedings sparked chaos in parliament. Bolsonaro has been serving a 27-year term since last month after his conviction for a scheme to stop Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva from taking office after the 2022 election. Lawmakers had been discussing a bill that would significantly reduce sentences for several crimes, including attempting a coup d’etat — opening up the prospect that Bolsonaro, 70, could have his sentence cut to
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘UNWAVERING ALLIANCE’: The US Department of State said that China’s actions during military drills with Russia were not conducive to regional peace and stability The US on Tuesday criticized China over alleged radar deployments against Japanese military aircraft during a training exercise last week, while Tokyo and Seoul yesterday scrambled jets after Chinese and Russian military aircraft conducted joint patrols near the two countries. The incidents came after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi triggered a dispute with Beijing last month with her remarks on how Tokyo might react to a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. “China’s actions are not conducive to regional peace and stability,” a US Department of State spokesperson said late on Tuesday, referring to the radar incident. “The US-Japan alliance is stronger and more
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS