Tokyo (AsiaNews)
- The Japan coast guards has fought a brief battle using water cannon against
dozens of Taiwanese fishing vessels and some military ships that have tried to
enter the territorial waters of the Diaoyu / Senkaku. The islets are contested
by Tokyo, Beijing and Taipei.
As
Japan's NHK
television showed, Japanese coastguards launched jets of high pressure
water against vessels flying the flag of Taiwan. In
turn, the Taiwanese responded with their water cannons. Taiwan's
ships only left the area in the early afternoon.
Osamu
Fujimura, cabinet secretary told reporters that eight ships of the Coast Guard
in Taiwan and 40 vessels of the island had reached the waters of the Senkaku. A
spokesman for Taiwan has confirmed that there were about 60 vessels, within a
few kilometers from the coast and thus violating the limit of territorial
waters.
The
ships had left the day before from the port of Suao in the northeast of the
island to affirm the rights of the Taiwanese fishing fleet.
The
archipelago is under the sovereignty of the Senkaku in Japan, but the five
islets and three atolls are also claimed by China and the Republic of China,
namely Taiwan. The
tug of war between the two largest economies in Asia has worsened in recent
months in which the government of Tokyo has purchased some of the islands owned
by a private Japanese citizen. Activists
from Hong Kong, Taiwan, mainland China and Macao have all symbolically planted their
flags on one of the islands, but they were taken away by the Japanese guards. In
China, there have been massive demonstrations against the Japanese Embassy with
acts of vandalism against Japanese cars, products, shops and factories,
permitted and even supported by Beijing police.
According
to several analysts, China is stoking the flames of patriotism to divert
people's attention from the serious economic crisis and internal power
struggles of the Party, before the Congress, scheduled for mid-October.
In
this war of sovereignty, China eve tolerates the flag of Taiwan, sometimes
considered an offense to unity and sovereignty of the People's Republic. Beijing
considers Taiwan a "renegade province" and does not allow the
presence of its representatives in international fora.
The
much disputed islands are a rich fishing area, it is assumed that subsoil there
are also large deposits of gas, in addition, their strategic location being
along the major shipping routes.
In
an attempt to defuse the tension that is likely to hurt the economy of China
and Japan, today Chikao Kawai, Japanese Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, has
gone to Beijing for a meeting with his counterparts.