Vietnam will open repair facilities for foreign naval ships and submarines at the former US military base at Cam Ranh Bay, state media reported yesterday, amid regional concern over China’s growing maritime might.
Tuoi Tre newspaper quoted the defense minister as saying the port also could be a fuel stop for aircraft carriers.
Phung Quang Thanh told local reporters on the sidelines of a National Assembly session that the facilities would mainly serve Vietnam’s own navy, but services provided to foreign navies could help offset operating costs.
That follows similar comments by Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung over the weekend at the end of an Asian summit here that the services would be offered to vessels from all countries at market rates.
Vietnam’s offer comes amid concern among Southeast Asian countries over a series of aggressive moves by China on the high seas and long-running territorial disputes — including a recent spat with Vietnam after China arrested nine of its fishermen near disputed islands in the South China Sea. China eventually released them.
Cam Ranh is strategically located near key shipping lanes in the South China Sea and is close to the potentially oil-rich Spratly Islands (南沙島礁) and Paracel islands. The Spratlys are claimed by Vietnam, Taiwan, China, Malaysia, the Philipines and Brunei. The Paracels are claimed by Vietnam and China.
The US, which has irked China by voicing concern that the territorial disputes could imperil those international shipping lanes, has recently promoted its ties with former enemy Vietnam, including US Navy port calls and flying high-ranking Vietnamese officials to a US aircraft carrier off Vietnam’s central coast.
Cam Ranh Bay served as a US air and naval base during the Vietnam War. It was taken over by the former Soviet Union in 1979 under a 25-year rent-free agreement, then returned to Hanoi in May 2002. Vietnam has said it would not allow a foreign base in the bay again, but would develop it for national economic development and defense.
Thanh Nien newspaper quoted Thanh as saying that Vietnam will hire Russian consultants and buy Russian technology for the new repair facilities, which will take three years to build. He said the facilities would be separate from Vietnam’s current naval base there, dismissing worries of revealing military secrets when foreign naval ships anchor at the port.
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Central Committee is to gather in July for a key meeting known as a plenum, the third since the body of elite decisionmakers was elected in 2022, focusing on reforms amid “challenges” at home and complexities broad. Plenums are important events on China’s political calendar that require the attendance of all of the Central Committee, comprising 205 members and 171 alternate members with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at the helm. The Central Committee typically holds seven plenums between party congresses, which are held once every five years. The current central committee members were elected at the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed his pledge to replace India’s religion-based marriage and inheritance laws with a uniform civil code if he returns to office for a third term, a move that some minority groups have opposed. In an interview with the Times of India listing his agenda, Modi said his government would push for making the code a reality. “It is clear that separate laws for communities are detrimental to the health of society,” he said in the interview published yesterday. “We cannot be a nation where one community is progressing with the support of the Constitution while the other
CODIFYING DISCRIMINATION: Transgender people would be sentenced to three years in prison, while same-sex relations could land a person in jail for more than a decade Iraq’s parliament on Saturday passed a bill criminalizing same-sex relations, which would receive a sentence of up to 15 years in prison, in a move rights groups condemned as an “attack on human rights.” Transgender people would be sentenced to three years’ jail under the amendments to a 1988 anti-prostitution law, which were adopted during a session attended by 170 of 329 lawmakers. A previous draft had proposed capital punishment for same-sex relations, in what campaigners had called a “dangerous” escalation. The new amendments enable courts to sentence people engaging in same-sex relations to 10 to 15 years in prison, according to the