Vietnam, China start their border talks

Vietnam, China start their border talks

HANOI (Reuter): Vietnamese and Chinese ministers held talks yesterday on border issues and problems in the South China Sea, where the two communist neighbors dispute territorial waters and oil-drilling rights.

"To sit together and talk is better than to dispute," Vietnam's delegation leader, deputy foreign minister Vu Khoan, told reporters in the Vietnamese capital before starting the talks, scheduled to last four days.

Welcoming his Chinese counterpart, Tang Jiaxuan, on a fine day in Hanoi, Khoan said the signs were good.

"Given clement weather, favorable terrain and concord between the two peoples, it is sure that our talks will make progress," he said.

Khoan and Tang will review the results of four rounds of discussions by experts since they first met in Beijing a year ago and agreed that China and Vietnam would shun the use of force to resolve border disputes.

They signed that landmark agreement last October, two years after Vietnam and China normalized relations to end more than a decade of hostility following Vietnam's 1978 invasion of Cambodia and a border war in 1979.

But Hanoi and Beijing remain in dispute over the Spratly Islands -- where their armed forces clashed in 1988 -- and over China's claim to most of the South China Sea and associated oil prospection rights.

Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan also claim the potentially oil-rich Spratlys, in whole or in part.

Second round

Khoan told reporters: "This is the second round of negotiations at (the) ministerial level... We will discuss South China Sea problems. Naturally, we will review our negotiations at (the) expert level on the land border and in the Tonkin Gulf too."

Western diplomats said they expected the two sides to avoid discussing the South China Sea disputes in detail in the interests of maintaining good relations.

Asked whether Chinese ships were blocking a Vietnamese oil rig drilling in an area west of the Spratlys, Khoan said: "I have no information about it. Everything is normal now."

Oil industry sources said the Vietnamese rig was still operating last week in the area, called Tu Chinh by the Vietnamese and Wan'an Bei by the Chinese, but Vietnam has not officially confirmed reports that drilling is going on.

News reports that Chinese warships are preventing the Vietnamese rig from working or blocking supplies have not been confirmed.

"I don't think there's a stand-off out there with gunboats and everything," a foreign oilman said.

Vietnam's state-controlled newspapers did not comment on the talks with China, and Tang's presence was overshadowed on the front pages by an official visit to Hanoi by President Nouhak Phoumsavan of Laos, their mutual neighbor.

Three working sessions are scheduled this week, and the Chinese delegation is due to meet Vietnamese President Le Duc Anh, who visited China last November.

The Chinese negotiators are also scheduled to visit Halong Bay, a scenic group of islands in the Tonkin Gulf.

A Vietnamese official said the delegation would return to China across the land border on Friday near the town of Lang Son, where considerable cross-border trade takes place.