The vice president affirmed that the US will work to “defend the international freedom of navigation based on rules” to find a solution to the conflictive situation in the South China Sea.
US Vice President Kamala Harris said Wednesday that her country has to find “ways to pressure” Beijing to respect international laws in the South China Sea, where it maintains territorial tensions with several countries.
“We have to find ways to pressure and increase pressure on Beijing to comply with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and challenge its excessive and intimidating maritime claims,” Harris said in Hanoi after his meeting with the President of Vietnam. , Nguyen Xuan Phuc.
The vice president, who began her official visit to Vietnam today as part of her five-day tour of Southeast Asia, said she will work closely with Vietnam to “defend international rule-based freedom of navigation,” including the troubled South China Sea.
His statements come after he warned Beijing on Tuesday in Singapore that it will support its allies in Southeast Asia in the face of their threats and accused him of “coercing and intimidating” the countries with which it has disputes , claiming as its own the great majority of its waters and islands.
The number two of the Joe Biden Administration addressed this issue in her meeting with the president of Vietnam, one of the five countries that disputes territories with China in those waters, along with the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
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In recent years, the Chinese regime has built facilities on artificial islands that could be for military use, which has generated concern in neighboring countries and in the United States, which calls for free navigation throughout the region.
The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded yesterday to Harris’s accusations by stating that the US “defends its selfishness and its hegemonic behavior under the pretext of an ‘order’ and some ‘rules'”.
Harris began his official visit to Vietnam on Wednesday in Hanoi, despite the “abnormal health incident” of US diplomats that the day before forced him to delay his trip to the Vietnamese capital.
Harris’s plane left Singapore more than three hours later than scheduled and landed in Hanoi, Vietnam at 9:45 p.m. local time (2:45 p.m. GMT), where it was received by several representatives of the Vietnamese government and the US embassy in the country.
Official US sources confirmed to the television networks NBC and CBS that at least two US diplomats will have to be evacuated with medical aid from Vietnam after experiencing these mysterious “acoustic incidents” this past weekend.
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The vice president began her official agenda with a courtesy call to her Vietnamese counterpart, Vo Thi Anh Xuan, and is scheduled to co-chair the opening of a disease control center for Southeast Asia in the afternoon.
According to the White House, Harris will discuss with Vietnamese leaders on security cooperation, improving supply chains in the context of the pandemic, the climate crisis and the importance of multilateral cooperation.
As he has done since he began his tour of Southeast Asia in Singapore on Monday, Harris will emphasize the priority importance that the Joe Biden Administration attaches to the region, where China has strengthened its influence in recent years.
The United States Government routinely refers to as “abnormal health incident” the mysterious “attacks” against US diplomats that were first detected in Cuba in 2016 and whose origin is unknown, but which cause symptoms similar to those of the injuries. cerebral.