Manila and Washington have grown closer amid growing tension with Beijing in the disputed South China Sea.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr welcomed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to Manila, emphasizing the need for regular and open engagement between Manila and Washington to ensure an “agile” response amid ongoing tension in the disputed South China Sea.
Marcos has brought the Philippines closer to the United States since he replaced Rodrigo Duterte in 2022.
On Tuesday, he greeted Blinken and Austin at Malacanang Palace ahead of meetings with their Filipino counterparts, Enrique Manalo and Gilberto Teodoro. This is the first time that Manila has hosted so-called “2+2” meetings between the two countries.
“I’m always very happy that these lines of communication are very open so that all the things that we’re doing together, in terms of our alliance, in terms of the specific context of our situation here, in the West Philippine Sea and in the Indo-Pacific , are continually examined and re-examined, which is why we are agile in terms of responses”, said Marcos.
Blinken said the talks were evidence of “a steady beat, a very high level of commitments between our countries.”
“We are very grateful for this partnership,” Blinken told Marcos.
The Philippines is one of several Southeast Asian nations that claim parts of the South China Sea and tensions with China, which claims nearly the entire waterway, have risen sharply over the past year.
According to Thomas Shoal, which is about 200 km (124 miles) from the island of Palawan in the western Philippines and more than 1,000 km (620 miles) from the island of Hainan in southern China, and where Manila carries out missions Regular refueling stations for a ship that ran aground there in 1999 have emerged as a key flashpoint.
Last month, a Filipino sailor lost a finger after a confrontation that Manila described as an “intentional high-speed collision” by the Chinese coast guard.
Although Manila has refused U.S. offers of assistance, it reached an “interim agreement” with China this month to manage differences, but details of the agreement have not been released.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Blinken and Austin discussed with Marcos “their shared commitment to upholding international law in the South China Sea,” with U.S. officials reiterating the U.S.’s “strong commitments to Philippines” under the Mutual Defense Treaty of the two countries.
Blinken and Austin traveled to Manila after talks with their counterparts in Japan, another key U.S. ally in the region, where they announced an update to U.S. military command in Japan and labeled China the “greatest strategic challenge” facing the region. .
This visit also included a meeting of foreign ministers from the so-called Quad group, which includes the USA, Japan, Australia and India. The group condemned China’s actions in the South China Sea, where it has become increasingly assertive despite an international court ruling in 2016 that its claims had no legal merit.
China’s Foreign Ministry responded to Washington and Tokyo over the Quad’s statement, saying its actions constituted “normal military deployment and national defense policy” and accusing the Quad of “artificially creating tension, inciting confrontation and containing the development of other countries”.
The Pentagon said U.S. officials will also announce $500 million in foreign military funding for the Philippines during the visit, part of $2 billion in aid to Asia-Pacific countries that the U.S. Congress sees as “for confront Chinese aggression.”
The Pentagon also proposed spending $128 million on infrastructure improvements at Philippine bases accessible to U.S. forces under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). There are now nine sites under the EDCA, after Manila agreed last year to add four new sites, including three in the north that are seen as particularly important in case China invades Taiwan, the democratic island that Beijing claims as its own.
The US and the Philippines have also been negotiating an information-sharing agreement known as the General Military Information Security Agreement, which they aimed to reach by the end of 2023, but has not yet concluded.
This story originally appeared on Aljazeera.com read the full story
