New Zealand used high-level talks in Beijing to raise concerns about the surprise deployment of Chinese warships off its western coast, New Zealand Minister of Foreign Affairs Winston Peters said yesterday.
Dozens of commercial flights were forced to divert last week when the vessels announced live-fire drills underneath a busy flight path halfway between Australia and New Zealand.
Both nations have criticized China for springing the drills with little warning — Australian officials said a last-minute alert was broadcast on a channel unchecked by air controllers. Peters said he raised “the failure to give us adequate notice” while meeting with Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) in Beijing on Wednesday.
Photo: Reuters
“This is a failure in [our relationship] at this time, and we’d like to have it corrected into the future,” Peters told reporters in Beijing following the meeting.
“We did place on record our concern, and the expectation that we will have a better warning in the future,” he said. “I think it would be true to say that he took our concerns on board.”
Wang told Peters both countries should become partners of mutual trust and resolve “some specific differences” through dialogue, a readout from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
Peters was in Beijing for a three-day visit after relations between the two countries became strained over the drills.
New Zealand also raised the importance of “international rules” underpinning “stability” in the region, Peters said in a statement released yesterday.
“Our region and the world are facing a myriad of challenges, including increased tensions in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait,” it said.
Australia and close ally New Zealand have been monitoring the vessels — a frigate, a cruiser and a supply tanker — since they were detected in international waters off Australia last week.
Officials said 49 commercial flights were forced to divert around the live-fire zone on Friday last week.
The Chinese ships were south of Tasmania in Australia’s exclusive economic zone and were now moving west, the New Zealand Defense Force said on Wednesday.
China has defended its conduct as “safe, standard and professional.”
Peters said he also raised China’s missile launch test in September last year that landed near French Polynesia’s exclusive economic zone, of which “most Pacific Island nations got no warning at all” and New Zealand got “little warning.”
China was considering the issue of providing earlier notice for future naval drills, he said.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS