China has been accused of ‘harassment and intimidation of Philippine vessels’ by the United States who have now called on Beijing to end ‘provocative’ action in the South China Sea after a recent near-collision between a Chinese vessel and a Philippine Coast Guard boat.
‘We call upon Beijing to desist from its provocative and unsafe conduct,’ US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement on Saturday, just two days before President Joe Biden is to host his counterpart, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, in Washington, DC.
The State Department also warned that an attack on Philippine security forces or public vessels would trigger a US response.
‘The United States stands with our Philippine allies in upholding the rules-based international maritime order and reaffirms that an armed attack in the Pacific, which includes the South China Sea, on Philippine armed forces, public vessels, or aircraft, including those of the Coast Guard, would invoke US mutual defense commitments,’ Miller said in the statement.
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Africa Today News, New York reports that the US was sending the warning in response to a near-miss between Chinese and Philippine vessels off the Spratly Islands — the latest in a long string of maritime incidents between the two countries in the restive South China Sea.
The Philippines on Friday accused China’s coast guard of ‘aggressive tactics’ following an incident during a Philippine Coast Guard patrol close to the Philippines-held Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly archipelago, a flashpoint for previous altercations located 105 nautical miles (195km) off its coast.
The Second Thomas Shoal is home to a small Philippine military contingent on board a rusty World War Two-era US ship that was intentionally grounded in 1999 to reinforce the Philippines’s territorial claims in the South China Sea.
Beijing claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, ignoring an international ruling that the assertion has no legal basis.