Vietnam has hit back against China at the UN’s New York headquarters, ordering Beijing to withdraw an oil rig from the South China Sea and stop “interfering” with maritime safety in an ongoing territorial row.
The Vietnamese mission to the UN asked its position paper to be circulated to the General Assembly after China sought support at the international organization on Monday.
Hanoi and Beijing are embroiled in a bitter war of words, trading accusations over maritime confrontations near an oil rig that China moved into contested waters near the Paracel Islands (西沙群島, Xisha Islands), which are controlled by Beijing, but claimed by Taipei and Hanoi.
Vietnam demanded that China withdraw the oil rig, “escort vessels from Vietnam’s maritime zones and stop all activities that are interfering with maritime safety and security, and affecting regional peace and security,” the document said.
The Vietnamese government called on its Chinese counterpart to “promptly commence government-level negotiations” on sovereignty over the contested waters.
In the document it sent to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, China alleged that Vietnam rammed Chinese vessels more than 1,400 times near its oil drilling operations in the South China Sea.
Tensions over the oil rig sparked violent anti-China riots in Vietnam last month that Beijing says killed four Chinese citizens, while Hanoi puts the number at three Chinese.
China claims nearly all of the South China Sea and has become increasingly assertive in staking those claims against Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Brunei and Malaysia, who all have rival claims to parts of the sea.
Amid the escalating territorial spats, US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Russel on Wednesday proposed that China and Southeast Asian nations call a moratorium on actions seen as provocative in a bid to cool tensions in the sea.
Russel said he made the suggestion as “food for thought,” not as a formal proposal, as he met regional counterparts in Myanmar to prepare for a regional summit later this year.
“The claimant states themselves could identify the kind of behavior that they each find provocative when others do it and offer to put a voluntary freeze on those sorts of actions on the condition that all the other claimants would agree to do so similarly,” Russel told reporters during a conference call. “So for example, would they be willing to make a pledge as simple as not to occupy any of the land features in the South China Sea that are currently unoccupied?”
Russel said that the Chinese delegation at the talks in Myanmar offered a “spirited and vigorous defense” of its position, but voiced hope that Beijing understood that other nations’ statements were “offered not in the spirit of condemnation, but in the spirit of compromise.”
The US has pushed for years for a code of conduct to lay out rules to prevent the escalation of incidents in the South China Sea, but Russel acknowledged that tensions have been “going up quickly.”
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