Vietnam, China move closer to resolving territorial disputes
Vietnam and China have moved a step closer to settling their
decades-old territorial disputes through the laying of a
symbolic marker stone on their land border, Vietnamese
officials said.
The first marker along the western section of their common
frontier was placed between Vietnam's border town of Lao
Cai and the Chinese border station of Hekou in the
southwestern province of Yunnan on Saturday.
"This will lay a solid foundation for the building of a friendly
and stable borderline between Vietnam and China," Vietnam's
Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs, Le Cong Phung, told the
official Vietnam News Agency (VNA).
Phung said the event would bolster stability along the border, the scene of a bloody war two decades ago, by
creating favourable conditions for completely marking the entire Vietnam-China border.
"A clearly marked borderline will also contribute to promoting peace, stability and cooperation in the region," said
the deputy foreign minister, who is also the government's chief negotiator on border issues with China.
The marker was the second of more than 1,500 markers that are set to be placed along the 1,350-kilometre
(840-mile) border within the next three years.
Ideological soulmates but historical rivals, China and Vietnam fought a brief but bloody war along their common
border in 1979 following a Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia.
China's ambassador to Vietnam, Wi Jianguo, speaking at the ceremony, said the inauguration of the marker was
"a new milestone in the marking of the Vietnam-China borderline".
Wi affirmed China's "determination to increase solidarity and cooperation with the Vietnamese people to further
develop the two countries' traditional bilateral friendship," VNA reported.
The demarcation of the land border, according to a treaty signed in late 1999, kicked off in December last year
when a granite stone was set up at its easternmost end, near the South China Sea.
The treaty came about after eight years of tough negotiations, complicated by Vietnamese accusations that
Chinese troops had moved some 100 border markers during the 1979 conflict.
The two communist regimes reached an agreement on their sea border in the Gulf of Tonkin, known as Beibu Gulf
by the Chinese, in late 2000, but have conflicting claims to islands in both the Paracel and Spratly chains in the
South China Sea.
Agence France Presse - July 14, 2002.
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