3 years ago
315
HANOI — Vice President Kamala Harris called connected Vietnam to articulation the U.S. successful challenging China’s “bullying” successful the South China Sea, continuing her crisp rhetoric against Beijing arsenic she met with Vietnamese leaders connected Wednesday.
“We request to find ways to unit and rise the pressure, frankly, connected Beijing to abide by the United Nations Convention connected the Law of the Sea, and to situation its bullying and excessive maritime claims,” she said successful remarks astatine the opening of a gathering with Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc.
Harris besides expressed enactment for sending an further U.S. Coast Guard cutter to Vietnam to assistance support its information interests successful the disputed waterway, and pledged that the U.S. would “maintain a beardown beingness successful the South China Sea” to situation China.
During remarks successful Singapore connected Tuesday, Harris said Beijing’s actions to property its territorial claims successful the South China Sea magnitude to “coercion” and “intimidation.”
The vice president’s rebuke of China comes successful the mediate of her weeklong circuit of Southeast Asia, a travel that brought her to Singapore and Vietnam successful a bid to fortify U.S. ties to the Indo-Pacific portion to antagonistic China’s increasing subject and economical power there.
In summation to her committedness to support the South China Sea against Beijing advances, Harris unveiled an array of caller partnerships and enactment for Vietnam successful areas including clime change, commercialized and the coronavirus pandemic.
She announced that the U.S. volition nonstop 1 cardinal further doses of the Pfizer vaccine to Vietnam, bringing the full U.S. vaccine donation to Vietnam to 6 cardinal doses.
The U.S. volition besides supply $23 cardinal to assistance Vietnam grow organisation and entree to vaccines, combat the pandemic and hole for aboriginal illness threats. The Defense Department is besides delivering 77 freezers to store vaccines passim the country.
Vietnam is grappling with a caller coronavirus surge driven by the delta variant and debased vaccination rates. Only astir 2% of the country’s 98 cardinal radical are afloat vaccinated, and the surge successful cases prompted a caller lockdown successful Ho Chi Minh City, the nation’s concern hub and the halfway of the latest outbreak.
The caller U.S. assistance to Vietnam includes investments to assistance the state modulation to cleaner vigor systems and grow the usage of electrical vehicles, and millions successful assistance to wide unexploded weapons near implicit from the Vietnam War.
That U.S. warfare has returned to the spotlight implicit the past week arsenic the U.S. struggles with a likewise messy extremity to the Afghanistan War. Images of the evacuation of Kabul, arsenic the Taliban took afloat power of Afghanistan, evoked akin shots of U.S. helicopters lifting disconnected from the U.S. Embassy successful Saigon decades prior, prompting comparisons betwixt the 2 failed wars.
On Wednesday successful Vietnam, however, Harris referenced the advancement the 2 erstwhile foes person made, telling Vietnam’s president that “our narration has travel a agelong mode successful a 4th of a century.”
She besides embraced elevating the narration with Vietnam from a broad concern to a strategical partnership, a diplomatic designation that would bespeak the deepening ties betwixt the 2 countries.
After her bilateral meetings, Harris took a infinitesimal of soundlessness successful the pouring rainfall and laid flowers astatine the monument wherever John McCain’s level was changeable down by the North Vietnamese successful 1967. She noted it was the three-year day of Sen. McCain’s death.
For Harris, the absorption this week has been connected processing U.S. ties successful the portion to connection a beardown opposition to China, which has besides sought to woo Singapore and Vietnam with economical enactment and vaccines. While she emphasized during remarks successful Singapore connected Tuesday that the U.S. argumentation successful the portion is not simply astir countering immoderate 1 nation, the Biden medication has made confronting China globally a centerpiece of its overseas policy.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin responded to Harris’ Wednesday comments by accusing Washington of simply seeking to support “U.S. hegemony and its ain interests,” alternatively than lasting up for the rights of tiny countries.
“China firmly rejects the U.S. deployment of instrumentality enforcement forces successful the South China Sea, meddling successful determination affairs and disrupting determination bid and stability,” Wang said astatine a regular briefing.
In the afternoon, Harris announced the motorboat of a caller Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Southeast Asia determination office. The caller bureau volition beryllium 1 of 4 determination CDC offices globally, and is focused connected collaborating with determination governments connected probe and grooming to woody with and forestall planetary wellness crises. She said that portion combating the existent pandemic is simply a priority, “we indispensable be, if we are honest, amended prepared for the adjacent one.”
But adjacent arsenic Harris aimed to support her absorption squarely connected those cardinal docket items, her sojourn was shadowed by a caller information scare successful Vietnam.
Harris’ formation to Vietnam was delayed for hours Tuesday day aft the vice president’s bureau was made alert of an probe into 2 imaginable cases of the alleged Havana Syndrome successful Hanoi, according to medication officials. The Havana Syndrome is the sanction for a rash of mysterious wellness incidents archetypal reported by American diplomats and different authorities employees successful the Cuban superior opening successful 2016 that person since affected diplomats crossed the globe.
Asked astir the incidental Wednesday, Harris didn’t specifically code the imaginable cases, but alternatively expressed her gratitude for the enactment done by America’s diplomatic corps.
“The radical who enactment successful our embassies astir the satellite are bonzer nationalist servants who correspond the champion of what the United States believes itself to be, and aspires to be, which is simply a bully neighbour to our partners and our allies astir the globe,” she said aft a lease signing for the U.S. Embassy successful Hanoi.
English (US) ·