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By Dzung Trieu law firm |
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US Senator Joe Lieberman
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US Senator Joe Lieberman has criticized China for offering nine offshore blocks, located in Vietnam’s territory, to international gas and oil companies for bidding, the Vietnam News Agency reported Friday.
At the Maritime Security in the South China Sea Conference organized by US-based Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on Wednesday, Lieberman said that the action taken by China's state owned National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) was “unfounded” and “unprecedented.”
It is a “provocative” move that is a “rhetorical” comeback to Vietnam’s assertion of its legal rights through domestic law (the Law on the Sea of Vietnam) passed last week, Lieberman was quoted as saying.
The blocks lie within Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone that is recognized by international laws, he said.
Also, according to the senator, to solve the East Sea issue, all involved parties need to recognize that the disputes can only be resolved on the basis of international law.
Making historical claims only increases conflicts, tensions and the risk of violence, he said.
Earlier other international observers like Carlyle Thayer of the University of New South Wales in Australia also told the two-day conference that China's action was an act of revenge against Vietnam for having recently passed the Law on the Sea.
In other related news, the Vietnam Oil and Gas Association declared Friday that the CNOOC’s action was “wrong” and “meaningless,” as it violates the 1982 United Nations Convention on The Law of The Sea and international conventions on oil and gas.
The association “strongly” opposed the action and demanded that the CNOCC immediately cancel its “wrongful” invitation for bids and comply with international laws as well as the ground rules for solving sea issues that Vietnam and China signed last year, the news agency reported.
Early this week, foreign ministry spokesman Luong Thanh Nghi, and Do Van Hau, director general of the state-owned Vietnam National Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam), which are conducting activities at blocks overlapping with the ones eyed by CNOOC, also voiced the same criticisms of China.
Source:Thanh Nien News
