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| US Sen. John McCain (Image: Wiki Commons) |
By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.
SINGAPORE: In a clear message to the Obama Administration, our Pacific partners and to China, Sen. John McCain says the US military is not doing enough to challenge Chinese claims in the strategic South China Sea. Nor is the US doing enough to ratify the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, a vital economic objective in the region, the senator said on the eve of the Shangri-La conference here.
“We have not,” McCain said bluntly when I asked him after his speech here whether the US had done enough Freedom Of Navigation Operations (FONOP) to challenge China’s claims. “We have sort of made it a signal event when we sailed a destroyer within the 12-mile limit” — the “territorial sea” claimed by China around its islets — “and at one point the Department of Defense wouldn’t even acknowledge we had done that.
“We should make it clear that these are international waters and filling in islands is in violation of international law,” McCain said. “I would like to see both air and ship transiting the areas around these islands as just a normal routine.”
Read the full story at Breaking Defense