(VOVworld) – Territorial disputes in the East Sea were high on the agenda of a Wednesday workshop at the Inter-American Open University in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The workshop, entitled “ASEAN Maritime Space Management – Ideas for Argentina,” was where Argentinean scholars and ASEAN ambassadors share their ideas and experience in defending national maritime sovereignty.
Addressing the workshop, Vietnamese Ambassador to Argentina Nguyen Dinh Thao said Vietnam has full historical evidence and legal basis for its sovereignty over the Hoang Sa and Truong Sa archipelagos, adding that Vietnam’s policy is to settle disputes by peaceful means in line with international law.

Belgian scholar Eric Franckx speaks of the East Sea situation at the Wednesday workshop in Brussels.

Another workshop on the East Sea issue was held Wednesday in Brussels by the Egmont Royal Institute of International Relations and the Philippine Embassy in Belgium. Antonio T. Carpio, a legal expert with the Philippine Supreme Court, presented his analysis of East Sea disputes based on three types of documents: historical documents and ancient maps, official documents and declarations of nations involved in the disputes, and the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
These documents showed that China’s territorial and sovereignty claims in the East Sea are groundless.
The same day, the “Euro Presse Image” website ran an article on an earlier workshop on the East Sea in Paris. The article recalled recent developments in the region, including China’s unilateral claim of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over disputed waters with Japan and its illegal deployment of oil rig Haiyang Shiyou 981 in 2014. The article said that China’s actions escalated tension in the region and prompted other countries to enhance their military capacity.