Vietnam, China to try to hasten talks on sea dispute

HANOI: China and Vietnam agreed to speed up negotiations to end a long-running spat over the South China Sea, state media reported on Thursday, as Beijing continued a campaign to defuse tension over the issue that bubbled up this year.

Both countries, as well as the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan, have conflicting claims of sovereignty over parts of the potentially oil and gas rich body of water that is crossed by key shipping lanes.

Last week, the Philippines and China agreed on the need for a binding code of conduct in the South China Sea when Philippine President Benigno Aquino visited Beijing.

In Hanoi, China's top foreign affairs official, State Councilor Dai Bingguo, co-chaired closed-door discussions this week, which analysts see as paving the way for a visit to China by Vietnam's new Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong, possibly later this year.

The two sides "agreed to intensify the efforts to speed up the negotiation and work out a mutually agreeable solution on the issue, and pledged to work hard to sign an agreement as early as possible", China's Xinhua news agency reported.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, who met Dai on Wednesday, said differences of opinion over what Vietnam calls the East Sea were an objective fact, and the two sides needed "to hasten negotiations to sign an agreement on basic principles" for settling the dispute, the Vietnam News reported.

In July, China and Southeast Asian countries agreed on a preliminary set of guidelines in the South China Sea, a rare sign of cooperation in a row that has plagued relations in the region for years.

Dai, who outranks Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi, told Trong he hoped he would visit China soon, the paper reported.

In May and June, Vietnam accused Chinese maritime vessels of harassing and intentionally damaging equipment being towed by Vietnamese ships operating within Vietnam's exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea.

China denied that its ships had done anything wrong.

But reports of the incidents sparked a rare string of anti-China street protests on successive Sundays in Hanoi, which police forced to end ahead of Dai's visit after nearly three months.

Copyright Reuters, 2011