White House says China, Japan should resolve dispute diplomatically

        
The White House said on Tuesday that a dispute between China and Japan over islands in the East China Sea should be solved diplomatically.
  
"The policy announced by the Chinese over the weekend is unnecessarily inflammatory," White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters in California, where President Barack Obama is traveling.
   
"These are the kinds of differences that should not be addressed with threats or inflammatory language, but rather can and should be resolved diplomatically," he said.

This comes after two U.S. military aircraft have flown around disputed islands in the East China Sea without informing China, a Pentagon spokesman said on Tuesday, defying China's declaration that the region falls into a new airspace defense zone.        

"We have conducted operations in the area of the Senkakus.  We have continued to follow our normal procedures, which include not filing flight plans, not radioing ahead and not registering our frequencies," Colonel Steve Warren added, using the Japanese name for the islands.          

There was no Chinese response, Warren said.          


REUTERS