The comments late on Friday coincided with an announcement by a Vietnamese company responsible for promoting maritime safety that the navy was planning a day of of live-fire drills off the central coast on Monday.

Tensions in the region have risen, with China and Vietnam trading accusations of violating sovereignty. The barrage of allegations followed an incident, made public by Vietnam last month, in which authorities said a Chinese ship deliberately severed cables in use by a Vietnamese survey vessel in Vietnamese waters.

Although a military clash seems unlikely, the tensions could trouble diplomacy and possibly draw in the United States, which took up the South China Sea dispute last year. China has also quarrelled with the Philippines in recent weeks over maritime disputes.

Asked about a possible role for the United States or others in resolving the disputes, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Nguyen Phuong Nga said: “Maintaining maritime peace, stability, security and safety in the Eastern Sea is in the common interests of all nations within and outside the region.”

Using the Vietnamese term for the Sough China Sea, she added: “Every effort by the international community toward maintaining peace and stability in the Eastern Sea is welcome.”

The South China Sea is crossed by key shipping lanes and has potentially rich reserves of oil and gas.

The Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also claim territory in the South China Sea. But China’s claim is by far the largest, a vast U-shape over most of the sea’s 648,000 square miles (1.7 million square km), including the Spratly and Paracel archipelagos.

The website vms-north.vn warned vessels to avoid live-fire drills in an area on Monday that stretches into the sea about 40 km (25 miles) from the town of Hoi An, a popular tourist attraction near Vietnam’s fourth biggest city, Danang.

“All vessels are to refrain from engaging in activities in the area during the live-fire period,” the website said. The drills would take place from 8am-noon (0100-0500 GMT) and 7pm-midnight (1200-1700 GMT), it said.

Vietnam’s foreign ministry was unable to immediately confirm that the exercises were scheduled or give details.

China announced on Thursday that its navy would hold “routine” drills at the end of the month in international waters in the Pacific Ocean.

China’s growing military prowess and reach have alarmed other countries in the region, especially Japan and Taiwan, the island China claims as its own and has never renounced the use of force to recover.