BEIJING: China warned the United States on Tuesday that it has “no right to intervene” in its maritime disputes with the Philippines after another clash near a disputed reef in the South China Sea.
China and the Philippines have had repeated confrontations in the waters over the past year, including around a warship, grounded in 1999 by Manila on the contested Second Thomas Shoal, which hosts a garrison.
Both countries said on Monday that their coast guard ships had collided near the disputed Sabina Shoal, located 140 kilometers west of the Philippine island of Palawan and about 1,200 kilometers from Hainan island, the closest Chinese landmass.
China claims almost the entire South China Sea despite an international tribunal ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.
The United States condemned the “dangerous actions” against “lawful Philippine maritime operations” on Monday after the latest clash.
“These actions are the latest examples of (China) using dangerous and escalatory measures to enforce its expansive and unlawful South China Sea maritime claims,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said.
Asked about Patel’s remarks on Tuesday, his Chinese counterpart Mao Ning defended Beijing’s “legal measures to safeguard its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests.”
“The US is not a party in the South China Sea and has no right to intervene in maritime disputes between China and the Philippines,” Mao told a regular briefing.
“The US should stop provoking confrontation in the South China Sea, not disrupt regional stability and not escalate tensions,” Mao said.
Analysts have said Beijing’s aim is to push eastwards from the Second Thomas Shoal toward the neighboring Sabina Shoal in the Spratly Islands, encroaching on Manila’s exclusive economic zone and normalizing Chinese control of the area.
The confrontations have echoes of 2012 when Beijing took control of Scarborough Shoal, another strategic feature in the South China Sea closest to the Philippines.
China says US has ‘no right to intervene’ in South China Sea disputes
https://arab.news/pbejk
China says US has ‘no right to intervene’ in South China Sea disputes
- The US condemned the ‘dangerous actions’ against ‘lawful Philippine maritime operations’ on Monday after the latest clash
- ‘The US is not a party in the South China Sea and has no right to intervene in maritime disputes between China and the Philippines’
’Several’ deaths in thwarted Benin coup: government
- Among the dead was the wife of the president’s military chief-of-staff, who was himself fatally wounded
- Some coup plotters remained at large late Monday with as many as a dozen arrested
COTONOU: Several people died in Benin during a thwarted coup attempt on the weekend, the west African country’s government announced Monday after an emergency cabinet meeting.
Early Sunday, “violent clashes” erupted between the coup plotters and the Republican Guard at the Cotonou residence of President Patrice Talon, resulting in “casualties on both sides,” according to the government.
Among the dead was the wife of the president’s military chief-of-staff, General Bertin Bada, who was himself fatally wounded in a separate, earlier assault by the putschists.
Some coup plotters remained at large late Monday with as many as a dozen arrested.
“The small group of soldiers who organized the mutiny planned to remove the president of the republic from office, to subjugate the Republic’s institutions and to challenge the established order,” said the government’s secretary general, Edouard Ouin-Ouro, according to cabinet meeting minutes.
“They initially attempted to neutralize or kidnap certain generals and senior army officers,” he added.
The plotters, who staged their mutiny at the Togbin base in the capital according to the government, abducted Sunday night the chief of staff of the National Guard, Faizou Gomina, and also General Abou Issa, army chief of staff.
Both men were eventually released in Tchaourou, a central city located more than 350 km (215 miles) from Cotonou.
The army “surrounded the Togbin base” on Sunday, where “targeted, surgical airstrikes were then carried out, without exposing surrounding neighborhoods” to danger, the government said.
Benin says it received military assistance for the strikes from the Nigerian army and from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which announced the deployment of soldiers from four countries in the region.
Those troops are “currently housed” at the Togbin base, which “has been retaken,” according to Ouin-Ouro.
“This operation was carried out successfully, without loss of life,” and “the last attackers ... fled,” the government stated.
