Interview: Lebanon's party leader asserts Chinese sovereignty on South China Sea islands

China's sovereignty over the islands in the South China Sea is indisputable as it complies with thousands of years' history and international law, Vice Chairman of Lebanon's Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) Dureid Yaghi asserted on Wednesday.

In an interview with Xinhua, Yaghi denounced the act of taking the South China Sea dispute to the international arbitration tribunal.

"There is a regional agreement among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries to solve all disputes through peaceful means among all concerned parties," Yaghi said.

"If an ASEAN country resorts to arbitration, it is violating the basis of the agreements and international law, and violates essentially the legal sovereignty of China over the islands," the PSP official stressed.

"China called for dialogue and is refusing any dispute as it considers dialogue as the basis of the agreement among the ASEAN," Yaghi said.

As for the Philippines asking for arbitration, Yaghi said, "someone is pushing that country or another to start a conflict, knowing that the Philippines signed the ASEAN agreements."

Viewing an international arbitration to widen the regional dispute and to incite conflicts over the islands, the politician added that "some foreign countries want to use the issue on a political background to push China into a military conflict or transform this region in general into a hotbed for a military conflict."

China announced clearly that "it respects international law that guarantee free navigation and secure stability in that geographical area," he noted.

The "arbitration rule could be against China's interests but the importance is to stick to the regional agreements within ASEAN based on international law," he said.

He blamed "foreign intervention in regional affairs," calling it "the acts of colonialism or any state with colonial intentions."

"Some of the United Nations organizations and the international courts are politicised and do not have free will in their decisions," said Yaghi, a renowned lawyer.

Yaghi compared the fact of luring some countries to interfere in the South China Sea to what has "happened in the Arab region, in Iraq, Syria and Libya." "It is an issue we witness almost everywhere around the world."

Presenting the South China Sea issue to the international arena, in the lawyer's opinion, "is to harm China or keep it busy in wars or regional conflicts for economic reasons."

"There are various types of terrorism and among them is the colonial terrorism used in the South China Sea to push the area into conflict," said Yaghi, "and then the Philippines or someone else would ask the U.S. to intervene." Endi