NEW DELHI \u2013 Just a few days after a high-profile Chinese missile test in the Pacific Ocean, on Sunday, the United States, the United Kingdom and a dozen other countries \u2013 both Western and Asian, including Italy \u2013 reiterated that China\u2019s territorial claims in the South China Sea have no legal basis.<\/p>\n
The occasion was the anniversary of a ruling by a tribunal established under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). \u201cWe reaffirm the validity of the Arbitral Tribunal\u2019s decision, according to which there is no legal basis for the extensive maritime claims put forward by China in the South China Sea, including those based on so-called \u2018historic rights\u2019,\u201d the statement reads.<\/p>\n
The Tribunal had ruled that \u2018there is no legal basis for China to claim historical rights over the resources of the South China Sea\u2019 outside its own territorial areas recognised by the Convention itself. The joint statement also condemned activities deemed \u2018destabilising\u2019 in the disputed maritime areas, arguing that they pose a threat to security, peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific.<\/p>\n
Modi\u2019s tour of the Indo-Pacific<\/p>\n
This statement came after an unusually busy week on the diplomatic front, largely due to the state visit by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who visited Indonesia, Australia and New Zealand, signing agreements in various fields, but above all in strategic sectors such as defence and energy security.<\/p>\n
Among other things, India will sell the BrahMos supersonic missiles \u2013 which it produces in a joint venture with the Russians \u2013 to Indonesia, and will purchase uranium from Australia, the country with the world\u2019s largest reserves of the mineral, which had, however, always refused to make it available to New Delhi for fear that the supplies might be diverted towards the production of nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW DELHI \u2013 Just a few days after a high-profile Chinese missile test in the Pacific Ocean, on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":687421,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-687420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=687420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/687420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=687420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=687420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=687420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}