Hanoi--Senior officials from Vietnam and China met secretly yesterday to avoid widening discussion on the dispute in South China Sea, an informed source told The Nation.
China does not want the South China Sea problems to be "internationalized" through discussion in the region-wide security forum, Asean Regional Forum, scheduled on Friday.
As the Asean chair, Vietnam has been very careful not to raise the temperature of the overlapping claims in the resource-rich in South China Sea. Vietnam is a claimant along with Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines. China and Taiwan are also claimants.
The Nation
