(VOVworld) – Ambassador Le Hoai Trung, Vietnam’s Permanent Representative to the UN, on Thursday asked UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to circulate two documents of the 68^th UN General Assembly clarifying Vietnam’s sovereignty over the Hoang Sa (Paracel) archipelago and exposing the fallacies of China’s claims.

A Vietnam Coast Guard ship performing its duty near the site where China's oil rig Hai Yang 981 is positioned.

In the first document, Vietnam pleads with specificity the legal arguments for its opposition to China’s illegal placement of oil rig Haiyang Shiyou-981, countering all allegations set forth in China’s notes dated May 22 and June 9 to the UN Secretary General. Vietnam says China escalated tensions in the East Sea by positioning its oil rig in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone and continental shelf where Vietnam enjoys the rights of coastal countries in accordance with the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
The second document affirms Vietnam’s sovereignty over the Paracel islands and exposes China’s historical and legal claims of sovereignty over the group of islands (called Xisha in China) as meritless. In this document, the Vietnam Ministry of Foreign Affairs identifies with specificity discrepancies between the historical evidence and China’s claims regarding the Paracel Islands, specifically pinpointing Chinese assertions that are unclear, incorrect, or arbitrarily interpreted. Those documents do not prove that China established sovereignty over Hoang Sa because it was ownerless. On the contrary, historical evidence shows that China’s sovereignty has never included Hoàng Sa archipelago.
Meanwhile, Vietnam has provided historical documents proving that Vietnam established its sovereignty over the archipelago centuries ago, prior to any other nation’s claim. Vietnam has also provided documentary evidence proving that the archipelago was not delivered to China at international conferences before or after the end of World War II. The document says Vietnam has never recognised China’s sovereignty over the islands and that China tried to distort history by misinterpreting a 1958 letter from Prime Minister Phạm Văn Đồng and some publications in Vietnam before 1975. In the 1958 diplomatic note, Prime Minister Pham Van Dong did not mention sovereignty over the Hoang Sa or Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago.