(VOVworld) - Australia supports Vietnam’s efforts to deescalate and defuse tensions in the East Sea through diplomatic and legal channels. Professor Robert Hill, the former Australian Minister for Defense made the statement during a working session with a delegation from the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam in Sydney on Wednesday. The discussion, initiated by the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and the Lowy Institute for International Policy, examined developments in the East Sea with China given its consequential impact threatening peace and stability in the Southeast Asian region. Hill stated unequivocally that the provocative actions of China in illegally placing the Haiyang Shiyou 981 drilling oil rig and deploying armed ships and escort planes in Vietnam’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) were irrefutably and unnecessarily increasing tensions in the East Sea. Echoing Hill’s statements, Hoang Anh Tuan, Director-General of the Institute for Foreign Policy and Strategic Studies at the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam asserted that China’s actions were a serious violation of Vietnam’s sovereignty and jurisdiction. Tuan said they were egregious transgressions of the United Nations Charter and the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the 2002 ASEAN-China Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), and belie agreements reached by the two countries’ leaders. He said China’s provocation threatened peace and stability, security, safety and freedom of navigation in the region, and damaged friendly relations between the two peoples.  

Australian scholars and experts discussed China’s motive behind its deployment of the oil rig, ASEAN’s role in settling the dispute, the US’s ‘pivot’ policy, and Vietnam’s solutions.