US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter will visit an American aircraft carrier off Malaysia on Thursday, a senior US defence official said, amid rising tensions over Chinese actions in the South China Sea.
The official would not specify where the USS Theodore Roosevelt would be sailing at the time of the visit, but noted that the enormous nuclear-powered supercarrier has been on a “routine transit” of the South China Sea.
Carter, who is in Malaysia for a regional defence dialogue that was held Wednesday, will be joined on the carrier visit by Defence Minister Hishammuddin Hussein of Malaysia, which hosted the meeting.
They will spend a couple of hours aboard the vessel, the official added.
The visit could add to rising tensions between Washington and Beijing over China’s claims to virtually the entire South China Sea and its attempts to reinforce those claims by turning reefs and tiny islets that it controls into full-fledged islands through land-reclamation projects.
Last week, a US destroyer sailed within 12 nautical miles of at least one of the artificial islets in the Spratly Islands, a move by Washington to press its right to freedom of navigation in the area.
The sail-by infuriated Beijing, which called it a violation of its sovereignty over the island chain.
The friction over the issue forced Asia-Pacific defence ministers to scrap plans for a joint statement following Wednesday’s dialogue, after China objected to any wording that mentioned the South China Sea controversy.