Kamala Harris begins her visit to Vietnam: “We have to find ways to put pressure on Beijing”

Vice President of the United States, Kamala Harris said on Wednesday that her country should find “ways to pressure” Beijing to respect international laws in the South China Sea. It maintains regional tensions with many 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 to challenge its excessive and frightening maritime claims.”Harris said in Hanoi after meeting with Vietnamese President 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 would work closely with Vietnam to “defend international rules-based freedom of navigation,” including in the troubled South China Sea.

His comments come after Beijing warned on Tuesday in Singapore that it would support its Southeast Asian allies in the face of their threats and accused him of “coercion and intimidation” of countries it has at odds with., by claiming that the vast majority of its waters and islands belong to it.

The second lady in the Joe Biden administration took up the issue in her meeting with the president of Vietnam, one of the five countries that dispute land with China in those waters, along with the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.

In recent years, the Chinese regime has set up facilities on artificial islands that can be used for military purposes, which has alarmed neighboring countries and the United States, which advocates freedom of navigation throughout the region.

Yesterday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry responded to Harris’ accusations by saying that the United States “defends its selfishness and dominant behavior under the pretext of ‘order’ and ‘rules’.”

Harris began his official visit to Vietnam on Wednesday in Hanoi, despite the “abnormal health incident” of US diplomats that forced him the day before to postpone 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 pm local time (2:45 pm GMT), where it was greeted by several representatives of the Vietnamese government and the US embassy in the country. .

Official US sources confirmed to television networks NBC And CBS who – which At least two US diplomats must be evacuated with medical assistance from Vietnam after experiencing these mysterious ‘acoustic accidents’ the end of the previous week.

The Vice President kicked off her official agenda with a courtesy call with her Vietnamese counterpart, Phu Thi Anh Xuan, who is scheduled to co-chair the Southeast Asia Center for Disease Control inauguration in the afternoon.

According to the White House, Harris will discuss security cooperation with Vietnamese leaders, optimizing supply chains in the context of the pandemic and climate crisis and the importance of multilateral cooperation.

As he has done since he started his Southeast Asia tour in Singapore on Monday, Harris will emphasize the priority the Joe Biden administration places on the region, as China has consolidated its influence in recent years.

The US government routinely refers to mysterious “assaults” against US diplomats first discovered in Cuba in 2016 whose source is unknown, but which cause symptoms similar to those of brain injuries.

(With information from EFE)

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