China says U.S. naval ship broke the law

By Chris Buckley

BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Tuesday that a U.S. Navy ship involved in a confrontation with its fleet off the southern island of Hainan had violated international and Chinese laws.

Washington had urged China to observe international maritime rules after the Pentagon said five Chinese ships, including a naval vessel, harassed the USNS Impeccable in international waters on Sunday.

"The U.S. claims are gravely in contravention of the facts and confuse black and white and they are totally unacceptable to China," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu told a regular news briefing.

But the confrontation was unlikely to do lasting damage to ties between two countries as they combat the global economic slump, a Chinese analyst in Beijing said.

Global oil prices rose 3 percent on Monday and held above $47 a barrel on Tuesday, partly on jitters about tension between the world's top oil consumers.

Denny Roy, a U.S.-based expert on Asia-Pacific security, said the confrontation did not appear accidental, and was rather China's way of sending a message to Washington that it wanted respect for its growing military reach in the region.

"I don't think this happened spontaneously," said Roy, of the East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii, "No doubt it had the endorsement of central leaders in Beijing."

The latest row suggests Beijing will take a tougher stance as its naval ambitions grow, said analyst Shi Yinhong.

"The United States is present everywhere on the world's seas, but these kinds of incidents may grow as China's naval activities expand," Shi, an expert on regional security at Renmin University in Beijing, said.

The Chinese vessels "shadowed and aggressively maneuvered in dangerously close proximity" to the USNS Impeccable, an unarmed ocean surveillance vessel, with one ship coming within 25 feet, a U.S. Defense Department statement said.

Tropical Hainan, less than 100 km (60 miles) south of the mainland, hosts a Chinese naval base that houses ballistic missile submarines, according to independent analysts.

An unnamed spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington earlier denied the Chinese ships had violated maritime rules and said U.S. ships had been conducting illegal surveying, the website of Hong Kong-based Phoenix Television (news.ifeng.com) reported.

It said the incident happened 120 km (70 miles) south of the island.

Ma said there were laws about scientific research in Chinese waters.

The U.S. ship "violated the relevant international laws and Chinese laws and regulations," he said, urging the United States to halt such action. U.S. defense officials said the incident followed days of increasingly aggressive Chinese conduct in the area, including fly-bys by Chinese maritime surveillance planes.