Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., says he will introduce a resolution on Monday condemning recent Chinese action against Vietnam in the South China Sea over disputed waters, suggesting that the U.S. should take a more active role in settling long-running territorial disputes in the region.
Webb expressed his concern during comments before the Council on Foreign Relations after Chinese vessels rammed into a Vietnamese oil exploration ship on Thursday about 200 nautical miles off the coast of Vietnam. The incident has heightened tensions between the two nations, and Vietnam responded on Monday by holding a live-fire military exercise on an island in the South China Sea.
On Friday, the U.S. State Department said it was "troubled" by the rise in tensions, but the Obama administration—like past administrations—has been reluctant to get substantively involved in territorial disputes in which it has no direct interest. Webb, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, rejected that notion and argued that the U.S. needs to take a stance to prevent the situation from escalating further.
“Simply to say that you have no position doesn’t work toward resolving the problem,” Webb said. “That doesn’t mean we have to take sides. We should be calling for a different kind of forum to resolve these issues in a multilateral way.”
China has bitterly responded to past attempts by the Obama administration to weigh in on territorial spats in the region. Last year, Beijing was angered by remarks from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton calling for a multilateral approach to solve long-running territorial disputes there.
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