China calls on the United Kingdom and Iran to exercise restraint and refrain from escalating the situation with the Iranian oil tanker that has been captured in the waters of UK overseas territory of Gibraltar, Geng Shuang, spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said on Monday
BEIJING (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th July, 2019) China calls on the United Kingdom and Iran to exercise restraint and refrain from escalating the situation with the Iranian oil tanker that has been captured in the waters of UK overseas territory of Gibraltar, Geng Shuang, spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said on Monday.During a press conference on Sunday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that the tanker was not transporting oil to Syria, as was claimed by Gibraltar.
"Above all else, China has always been an advocate of following the internal law and the basic rules of international relations in an exchange between countries. Second, China has always argued against one-sided sanctions and so-called extraterritorial jurisdiction," the diplomat said.
Last Thursday, the UK Marines and Gibraltar authorities detained the Grace 1 supertanker for allegedly transporting crude oil to Syria. According to Chief Minister of Gibraltar Fabian Picardo, such measures were taken because of "information that gave the Gibraltar government reasonable grounds to assume that Grace 1 was acting in defiance of EU sanctions against Syria."
The Iranian Foreign Ministry has summoned the UK ambassador to protest the decision, and its official representative, Abbas Musawi, has declared that Tehran considers the tanker's detention unacceptable because the sanctions in question were not based on UN decisions.
