Vietnam, China to pursue talks

Vietnam, China to pursue talks

HANOI (Reuter): Vietnam and China agreed at a meeting in Beijing last week to continue negotiations over their claims to sovereignty of two disputed island chains in South China Sea, Vietnam's official media said yesterday.

"The two sides agreed that based on international laws...the expert group will continue negotiations on the sea issues in order to find out fundamental and long-term solutions acceptable to both sides," the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) said.

It said the meeting of the Sino-Vietnamese expert working group on sea issues which focused on the disputed and potentially oil-rich Paracel and Spratly islands, took place "in an atmosphere of friendship and frankness".

Tension over the two archipelagoes has bubbled beneath the surface of relations between the two neighbors since their warships clashed briefly in the Spratlys in the late 1980s.