Taiwan lawmakers visit Spratlys

TAIPEI—Three Taiwanese legislators flew to a hotly contested island in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea) on Tuesday as garrison forces there held a live-fire drill, officials said, risking stirring up new tensions in the area.

The lawmakers left an air base in the south of Taiwan at around 7 a.m. (2300 GMT Monday) on board a C-130 transport plane, arriving at Taiping, the biggest islet in the Spratlys, three-and-a-half hours later.

“The group observed a live-fire drill conducted by the Coast Guard,” Hsieh Chin-chin, a Coast Guard spokesperson, told Agence France-Presse.

Two of the lawmakers were from the ruling Kuomintang party, and the third was from the opposition Democratic Progressive Party.

The Spratlys are a group of islands claimed in whole or in part by Taiwan, China, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines. They are believed to lie on top of major energy resources and sit near a number of important trading routes.

The Spratlys, and the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea) as a whole, have been at the center of a series of escalating diplomatic rows between countries with overlapping territorial claims. AFP