Super Moderator
Location: essex ma
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so there are multiple contexts which could be mustered to frame this tempest in a teapot--what constitutes a legitimate claim to ocean, how many miles offshore does a nation-state extend--taiwan---jockeying for power/the Great Game 21st century stylee--surveillance of surveillance operations....take your pick. and as often happens, when the information starts to filter in, the notion of "playing hardball" dissolves into the puddle of stupid it sprung from.
Quote:
China Says U.S. Provoked Naval Incident
By MARK McDONALD
HONG KONG — China lashed out at the United States on Tuesday, blaming a U.S. Navy ship for violating international law during a tense confrontation near a Chinese submarine base.
The Pentagon said five Chinese vessels had blocked and surrounded a U.S. surveillance ship, Impeccable, in international waters on Sunday. One of the ships came within 25 feet of the U.S. boat, the Pentagon said.
“The U.S. claims are gravely in contravention of the facts and confuse black and white, and they are totally unacceptable to China,” said Ma Zhaoxu, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, at a briefing Tuesday in Beijing.
He did not specify what laws the American ship had broken, but said the Impeccable had “conducted activities in China’s special economic zone in the South China Sea without China’s permission.”
Although the United States and other nations consider most of the South China Sea to be international waters, China claims an economic exclusion zone extending 200 nautical miles, or 230 miles, from its coastline.
The encounter Sunday was the latest in a series of recent incidents in which Chinese ships shadowed the towering, twin-hulled Impeccable. The Pentagon said the confrontation took place in the South China Sea, about 120 kilometers, or 75 miles, from the island of Hainan, where China has an underground naval complex with submarine caves.
A United States Navy photo obtained by The New York Times showed a Chinese sailor manning a long grappling hook, and a navy spokesman said the Chinese had used the hook to try to snag a cable that the Impeccable was using to tow an underwater listening device known as a Surtass array.
“In short, this vessel is used by the military to track submarines,” said a report from GlobalSecurity.org, a defense-related Web site, in describing the Impeccable. The report also called the ship “the quietest vessel the government operates, outside of submarines themselves.”
“It’s not clear what the Chinese intentions were,” Capt. Jeff Breslau, a spokesman for the United States Pacific Command, said on Tuesday from the command’s headquarters in Hawaii. “There have been a few incidents over the past week and a half. But who orchestrated this latest one, and why, we don’t know.”
“We haven’t seen this level of activity recently,” he said.
Captain Breslau characterized the Chinese maneuvers as “dangerous”, although he said a hot line linking Adm. Timothy Keating, the head of the Command, with his military counterpart in Beijing was not used.
The captain said the Impeccable had radioed the Chinese vessels using an accepted international frequency. The American ship, which carries no fixed armaments, told the Chinese vessel that it had the right of safe passage in international waters.
“We spoke to them, we didn’t warn them,” Captain Breslau said. In previous incidents, he added, the Chinese have responded in English, but in the latest encounter they did not reply.
Admiral Keating would not comment Tuesday about the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s response, and Captain Breslau said further U.S. reaction would come through the State Department.
“They’re working this through diplomatic channels,” he said.
Admiral Keating, in a briefing last month in Hong Kong, expressed frustration over what he called a continuing lack of transparency on the part of senior military officials in China. He said Washington remained concerned about Chinese military expansion, especially in the development of area-denial weapons, anti-satellite operations and cyber-warfare.
Increasing patrols and wider deployments of Chinese submarines were less worrisome, he said.
“Their submarines,” the admiral said, “are not keeping me up at night.”
The Impeccable incident came just a week after the two countries resumed high-level talks between their militaries. The dialogue had been broken off last year by the Chinese over a $6.5 billion American arms deal with Taiwan.
The dispute also comes in the wake of a recent visit to China by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Her stop in Beijing was part of a tour of the Asia-Pacific region, her first overseas trip for President Obama’s administration.
Soon after Mrs. Clinton left China, the State Department angered Beijing with a broad set of criticisms of its human rights record in 2008.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/wo...y.html?_r=1&hp
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
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