“TRUNG QUỐC VI PHẠM LUẬT PHÁP QUỐC TẾ”

TRÍCH BÀI PHÁT BIỂU CỦA THƯỢNG NGHỊ SĨ JIM WEBB:

“… Trong vòng 10-12 năm qua, chúng ta đã và đang đối mặt với vấn đề làm thế nào để đối phó với tình hình vươn lên mạnh mẽ của Trung Quốc tại khu vực này.

Trong hơn một thập niên qua, Mỹ đã đối mặt với thách thức phát triển mối quan hệ đúng đắn với Trung Quốc, mối quan hệ mà theo đó một mặt Mỹ thừa nhận sự vươn lên mạnh mẽ của Trung Quốc như một cường quốc, mặt khác vẫn mong muốn duy trì ổn định trong khu vực.

Vài năm trở lại đây là thời điểm khó khăn nhất. Khu vực biển Đông đã nảy sinh nhiều vấn đề. Tàu hải quân và tàu cá Trung Quốc liên tục chạm trán với tàu Philippines ngoài khơi bờ biển Việt Nam và chạm trán cũng đã xảy ra tại quần đảo Senkaku gần Nhật…

Nguyên nhân rất rõ ràng, đó là vấn đề liên quan đến chủ quyền lãnh hải. Mọi người trong nhiều năm qua thường nói về chủ quyền liên quan đến lãnh thổ Đài Loan nhưng tôi đã nhiều lần đề cập còn có các vấn đề chủ quyền khác. Một khi vấn đề Đài Loan được giải quyết đã nảy sinh tranh chấp quần đảo Senkaku giữa Nhật và Trung Quốc, quần đảo Hoàng Sa giữa Việt Nam và Trung Quốc, quần đảo Trường Sa giữa năm quốc gia, trong đó có Trung Quốc và Philippines. Vì thế, trong hai năm gần đây, chúng ta bắt đầu nhìn thấy đối đầu quân sự tại khu vực này.

Thông điệp của Ngoại trưởng Mỹ Hillary Clinton trong hai năm qua rất rõ ràng rằng tình hình châu Á không đơn giản và Mỹ giữ vai trò quan trọng trong việc giải quyết vấn đề này một cách hòa bình và dựa trên bình diện đa phương.

Chúng ta đã từng đấu tranh tại Ủy ban Đối ngoại Thượng viện để thông qua Hiệp ước về luật biển nhằm giải quyết các vấn đề liên quan đến tranh chấp lãnh hải, hay nói khác hơn là vấn đề liên quan đến an ninh và nguồn tài nguyên khổng lồ trên biển.

Việc thông qua Hiệp ước về luật biển đã rất khó khăn. Hầu hết các nước trên thế giới đều nhận thấy các nguyên tắc cơ bản để giải quyết vấn đề quốc tế thông qua diễn đàn đa phương. Nếu thiếu luật này và với tình hình phát triển mạnh về quân sự của Trung Quốc, tôi nghĩ Trung Quốc sẽ ngày càng trở nên khiêu khích hơn.
Tháng trước cũng là thời điểm rất khó khăn khi Trung Quốc thông qua việc thành lập TP Tam Sa tại khu vực Việt Nam tuyên bố chủ quyền. Ngày 13-7, các nước ASEAN đã thất bại trong việc đưa ra tuyên bố chung về vấn đề biển Đông. Ngày 22-7, Quân ủy Trung ương Trung Quốc thông báo triển khai đơn vị đồn trú tại quần đảo Hoàng Sa thuộc vùng đặc quyền kinh tế của Việt Nam.

Ngày 23-7, Trung Quốc chính thức thực hiện thông báo trên. Theo đó, Trung Quốc đã bố trí 45 nhà lập pháp phụ trách quản lý dân sinh sống tại quần đảo này. Họ đã bầu chủ tịch và phó chủ tịch. Họ đã thông báo một ủy ban thường trực gồm 15 thành viên điều hành TP Tam Sa gồm 200 đảo nhỏ, cồn cát, bãi đá…

Trung Quốc đã từ chối giải quyết các vấn đề tranh chấp qua diễn đàn đa phương. Trung Quốc đòi chỉ giải quyết song phương với từng nước. Tại sao vậy? Bởi vì Trung Quốc có thể lấn át mỗi nước riêng rẽ. Đó là vi phạm luật pháp quốc tế… Những động thái này của Bắc Kinh đã gây ra nhiều rắc rối. Tôi yêu cầu Bộ Ngoại giao Mỹ cần làm rõ vấn đề biển Đông với Trung Quốc.”

JIM WEBB (DUY KHANG lược dịch)
Nguồn dịch: http://phapluattp.vn/20120726113148260p1017c1078/trung-quoc-vi-pham-luat-phap-quoc-te.htm

Bản gốc:
Press Releases

Senator Webb: China’s Military and Governmental Expansion into South China Sea May Be a “Violation of International Law”

Calls on State Department to Clarify Situation

July 25, 2012

Washington, DC—Senator Jim Webb, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations East Asian and Pacific Affairs Subcommittee, today said China’s recent actions to unilaterally assert control of disputed territories in the South China Sea may be a violation of international law. He urged the U.S. State Department to clarify this situation with China and report back to Congress.

“With the resurgence of a certain faction of the Chinese tied to their military, China has become more and more aggressive,” said Senator Webb in a speech today on the Senate floor. “On the 21st of June, China’s State Council approved the establishment of what they call the Sansha City prefectural zone. This is literally the unilateral creation from nowhere of a governmental body in an area that is claimed also by Vietnam. This city they are creating will administer more than 200 islets, sand banks, and reefs covering two million square kilometers of water. They have populated and garrisoned an island that is in contest in terms of sovereignty, and they have announced that this governing body will administer this entire area in the South China Sea.”

“China has refused to resolve these issues in a multilateral forum,” said Senator Webb, who was the original sponsor of a resolution, unanimously approved by the Senate in June 2011, deploring the use of force by China in the South China Sea and calling for a peaceful, multilateral resolution to maritime territorial disputes in Southeast Asia. “They claim that these issues will only be resolved bilaterally, one nation to another. Why? Because they can dominate any nation in this region. This is a violation, I think quite arguably, of international law. It is contrary to China’s own statements about their willingness to work with ASEAN to try to develop some sort of Code of Conduct. This is very troubling. I would urge the State Department to clarify this situation with China, and also with our body immediately.”

Senator Webb has expressed concerns over sovereignty issues in this region for more than 16 years. His first hearing upon assuming chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations East Asian and Pacific Affairs Subcommittee was on maritime territorial disputes and sovereignty issues in Asia in July 2009. Senator Webb has worked and traveled throughout East Asia and Southeast Asia for more than four decades—as a Marine Corps Officer, a defense planner, a journalist, a novelist, a senior official in the Department of Defense, Secretary of the Navy, and as a business consultant.

A transcript of Senator Webb’s speech on the Senate floor follows:

For many years, since well before I came to the Senate, I have had the pleasure to work, travel inside East Asia in many different capacities--as a Marine in Okinawa and Vietnam, as a journalist, as a government official, as a guest of different governments, as a filmmaker, and as a business consultant.

What we have been able to do in the last five or six years in order to refocus our country’s interests on this vital part of the world I think is one of the great success stories of our foreign policy. At the same time, we have to always be mindful that the presence of the United States in East and Southeast Asia is the guarantor of stability in this region. If you look at the Korean Peninsula, you will see that for centuries there has been a cycle where power centers have shifted among Japan, Russia, and China. This is the only place in the world where the geographical and power interests of those three countries intersect, and they intersect with the Korean Peninsula right in the middle. We saw in the middle of last century what happened when Japan became too aggressive in this part of the world. The Japanese fought Russia in the early 1900s. They defeated them. This was when they moved into Korea, occupied Korea, and moved into China. This eventually resulted in our involvement in the Second World War, and since the Second World War, our presence has been the guarantor of stability. We’ve seen blow-ups – the Korean War, where we fought China in addition to North Korea, and the Vietnam War, in which I fought.

But generally, the long-term observers of this region--people like Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore--will say the presence of the United States in this region has allowed economic systems to grow and governmental systems to modernize. We have been the great guarantor of stability. The difficulty that we have been facing in the past 10 to 12 years has been how to deal with the economic and international growth of China in this region. Before China’s expansion, we had seen the reemergence of the Soviet Union. When I was in the Pentagon in the 1980s, Russia’s dream of having warm water ports in the Pacific had been realized. On any given day they would have about 20 to 25 ships in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, as the end result of the Vietnam War. But for the past 10 to 12 years, the challenge has been for us to develop the right sort of relationship with China so that we can acknowledge their growth as a nation, but maintain the stability that is so vital in this part of the world.

The last few years have been very troublesome. There have been a number of issues in the South China Sea that for a long time our military leaders assumed were simply tactical engagements--where Chinese naval vessels and fishing vessels would be involved in spats with the Philippines, off the coast of Vietnam and also in the Senkaku Islands near Japan--but it became very clear what we are seeing are sovereignty issues. People were talking for many years about solving the sovereignty issue in Taiwan, but it is clear--I was speaking about this for many years--that there are other sovereignty issues. Once Taiwan is resolved, there are the Senkaku Islands, which Japan and China both claim; the Paracels, which China and Vietnam both claim; the Spratlys, which are claimed by five different countries including China and the Philippines. So we started seeing a resurgence of incidents that became military confrontations just over the past couple of years. Our Secretary of State was very clear two years ago, almost to the day, that these situations were not simply Asian situations, they were in the vital interest of the United States to be resolved peacefully and multilaterally.

We have been struggling on the Foreign Relations Committee to try to pass the Law of the Sea Treaty to address these sorts of incidents, which by the way are more than security incidents, they involve potentially an enormous amount of wealth in this part of the world. We have had a very difficult time getting the Law of the Sea Treaty passed, where most of the countries around the world recognize the basic principles of how to resolve these international issues through multilateral involvement. In the absence of a Law of the Sea Treaty--and I think with the resurgence of a certain faction of the Chinese tied to their military--China has become more and more aggressive. This past month has been very troublesome. On the 21st of June, China’s State Council approved the establishment of what they call the Sansha City prefectural zone. This is literally the unilateral creation from nowhere of a governmental body in an area that is claimed also by Vietnam.

On Friday, July 13th, because of disagreements over how to characterize the South China Sea situation, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a 10-nation body which has been very forthcoming in trying to solve these problems, failed to issue a communiqué about a multilateral solution of the South China Sea issues.

On July 22nd, the Central Military Commission of China announced the deployment of a garrison of soldiers to the islands in this area. The garrison command will likely be placed in the Paracel Islands, which are claimed by Vietnam and within the exclusive economic zone of Vietnam.

On July 23rd, China officially began implementing this decision. It announced that 45 legislators are now to govern the approximately thousand people who are occupying these islands. They have elected a mayor and a vice mayor. They have announced that a 15-member Standing Committee will be running the prefecture. They have announced that this city they are creating will administer more than 200 islets, sand banks, and reefs covering two million square kilometers of water. In other words, they have created a governmental system out of nothing. They have populated and garrisoned an island that is in contest in terms of the sovereignty, and they have announced that this governing body will administer this entire area in the South China Sea.

China has refused to resolve these issues in a multilateral forum. They claim that these issues will only be resolved bilaterally, one nation to another. Why? Because they can dominate any nation in this region. This is a violation, I think quite arguably, of international law. It is contrary to China’s own statements about their willingness to work with ASEAN to try to develop some sort of code of conduct. This is very troubling. I would urge the State Department to clarify this situation with China, and also with our body immediately.

Nguồn: http://webb.senate.gov/newsroom/pressreleases/2012-07-25-03.cfm