WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that the United States would treat Beijing's pursuit of resources in the dispute-rife South China Sea as illegal, ramping up support for Southea
WASHINGTON - Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday that the United States would treat Beijing's pursuit of resources in the dispute-rife South China Sea as illegal, ramping up support for Southeast Asian nations.
Pompeo's statement goes further by explicitly siding with Southeast Asian nations including the Philippines and Vietnam, after years of the United States saying it took no position on individual claims. China earlier this month defended itself against US criticism over Beijing's military exercises in the South China Sea, saying its activities were "within the scope of China's territorial sovereignty." Beijing claims the majority of the South China Sea through the so-called nine-dash line, a vague delineation based on maps from the 1940s when the Republic of China snapped up islands from Japanese control.
The United States as a result now rejects Beijing's claims in the waters surrounding Vanguard Bank off Vietnam, Lucania Shoals off Malaysia, waters considered in Brunei's exclusive economic zone and Natuna Besar off Indonesia, Pompeo said. The 2016 decision was issued by a tribunal under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Pompeo noted that China is a party to it and called the ruling legally binding.
Critics both at home and abroad say that Trump is hoping to deflect attention ahead of the November election over his own handling of the virus in the United States, which has suffered by far the highest death toll of any country.
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