China returns seized U.S. naval drone
China returns seized U.S. naval drone:- China on Tuesday returned a U.S. naval drone seized in the South China Sea last week, a peaceful resolution to a military standoff that threatened to inflame maritime tensions ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration.
The Chinese Ministry of Defense said in statement that after “friendly negotiation” the drone was transferred to the U.S. In a separate statement, the Pentagon confirmed the drone’s return, but offered a less friendly-sounding account.
The incident was “inconsistent with both international law and standards of professionalism for conduct between navies at sea,” the Pentagon statement said.
“The U.S. has addressed those facts with the Chinese through the appropriate diplomatic and military channels, and have called on Chinese authorities to comply with their obligations under international law and to refrain from further efforts to impede lawful U.S. activities,” the statement said.
The standoff started last week after a Chinese submarine rescue ship close to the USNS Bowditch, an oceanographic survey vessel operating northwest of Subic Bay in the Philippines, took possession of the U.S. drone. The U.S. side said it asked the ship to return the vessel and the Chinese side refused.
The drone’s seizure about 50 nautical northwest of Subic Bay, a Philippine port that was once a U.S. military base and it still plays host to visiting U.S. troops and ships. The area is not far Scarborough Shoal, a cluster of reefs and rocks that has been a flashpoint in China-Philippine and China-U.S. relations.
Trump soon weighed-in on the matter, posting a message on Twitter that said: “China steals United States Navy research drone in international waters — rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act.”
When the Chinese side eventually agreed to return the vessel, Trump weighed in again. “We should tell China that we don’t want the drone they stole back.- let them keep it!” he wrote.
[China said it would return a seized U.S. naval drone. Trump told them to ‘keep it.’]
Trump’s response to the drone’s seizure deepened Chinese concerns about the president-elect’s Asia policy. Since winning the U.S. presidential election, he surprised Beijing by taking a phone call from Taiwan’s leader, Tsai Ing-wen, a move that broke with decades of diplomatic practice.
His comments on the Taiwan issue and tweets on the drone’s seizure have made him a figure of derision and ridicule in the Communist Party-controlled press.
“Trump is not behaving as a president who will become master of the White House in a month,” the Global Times, a Communist party controlled newspaper, wrote in an editorial on Sunday. “He bears no
Source:- https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/china-returns-seized-us-naval-drone/2016/12/20/4dde17b2-c633-11e6-acda-59924caa2450_story.html?utm_term=.6c9f87362981sense of how to lead a superpower.”
