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.