US PRESIDENT Barack Obama has invited President Aquino to a state visit early next year, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday.
Clinton made the statement in a joint press conference with Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, after they signed a joint statement of intent on the Partnership for Growth between their countries, which is hoped to help foster sustainable, broad-based growth in the Philippines.
Clinton, who met with President Aquino and his key Cabinet officials before the signing ceremonies, mentioned the US visit while discussing high-level exchanges between the Philippines and the US next year.
“We also are looking forward to President Obama welcoming President Aquino to the White House, to the Oval Office, sometime early next year because we have a lot of work to do,” Clinton said.
Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda said the US President extended the invitation to Mr. Aquino through Clinton, during their meeting that morning at Malacañang.
Asked whether the President has accepted the invitation, Lacierda said, “He thanked Secretary Hillary Clinton for the invitation. So that will be worked out by the DFA [Department of Foreign Affairs].”
Clinton also gave an assurance that the US will always be in the Philippines’s “corner” and will “always stand and fight” with its longtime ally.
In a ceremony on Wednesday aboard the USS Fitzgerald, a guided-missile destroyer which docked on Manila Bay, Clinton underlined America’s military and diplomatic support against the backdrop of an increasingly tense dispute with China over claims in the resource-rich South China Sea, which Mr. Aquino now prefers to call the West Philippine Sea.
Clinton and del Rosario signed a declaration calling for multilateral talks to resolve maritime disputes such as those over a string of islands on the South China Sea, including the Spratlys. Six countries in the region have competing claims, but China wants them to negotiate one-on-one—and chafes at any US involvement.
“The United States does not take any position on any territorial claim because any nation…has a right to assert it. But they do not have a right to pursue it through intimidation or coercion,” Clinton said after meeting Mr. Aquino.
Clinton said that at this week’s East Asian Summit in Bali, Indonesia, the US “will certainly expect and participate in very open and frank discussions,” including on the maritime challenges in the region. Beijing said on Tuesday it opposes bringing up the issue at the summit.
The US said it is helping its longtime Asian ally reinforce its weak navy as it wrangles with China over the sea’s potentially oil-rich Spratly islands, which straddle one of the world’s most vital sea lanes.
“We are making sure that our collective defense capabilities and communications infrastructure are operationally and materially capable of deterring provocations from the full spectrum of state and non-state actors,” Clinton said earlier aboard the Fitzgerald, which has operated in the South China Sea.
The Manila Declaration signed by Clinton and del Rosario commemorated the 60th anniversary of PHL-US Mutual Defense Treaty. It also calls for “maintaining freedom of navigation, unimpeded lawful commerce, and transit of people across the seas.”
Del Rosario said Washington’s support for “a stronger, reliable Philippine defense” was crucial to stability and the two allies’ common goals in the South China Sea. He reiterated that the Philippines planned to seek UN arbitration in the territorial dispute.
The Spratly Islands in the South China Sea are being disputed by China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei.
Del Rosario said the Philippines will pursue “compulsory conciliation” to validate its claim and settle its territorial dispute with China.
He said the Philippines has five options in this regard—through the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea, the International Court of Justice, two forms of arbitration, and compulsory conciliation.
“The first and the second require that we approach the forum with the other party which, in this case, would be China, but I think China hesitates to do this with us so we will in all likelihood proceed to the fifth mechanism and be able to secure a validation of our claim from that particular mechanism,” del Rosario said.
Although not siding with any Asian claimant as it maintains robust economic ties with Beijing, the US angered China when it stated it has a stake in security and unhampered international commerce in the South China Sea. China says American involvement will only complicate the issue.
A senior US State Department official traveling with Clinton told reporters that America’s military assistance to the Philippines will increasingly turn to bolstering its naval power.
For nearly a decade, the US military has been providing counterterrorism training, weapons and intelligence to help Filipino troops battle the Abu Sayyaf, a small but violent group blacklisted by Washington as a terrorist organization, and its allied militants from the Indonesia-based Jema’ah Islamiyah group.
“We are now in the process …of diversifying and changing the nature of our engagement,” the US official said on Tuesday on condition of anonymity because of sensitivity of the information. “We will continue those efforts in the south, but we are focusing more on maritime capabilities and other aspects of expeditionary military power.”
The US recently provided the Philippines with a destroyer, and the official said a second one would be delivered soon. “We are working on a whole host of things that would improve their own indigenous capabilities to be able to deal with maritime challenges,” the official said.
Clinton said global challenges have changed, including territorial disputes, and the US is helping to create a peaceful resolution without taking a position.
“The US does not take a position [on the territorial claims] but we are strongly against a nation using coercion and intimidation,” reiterated Clinton during an open forum hosted by a local television channel while not mentioning China by name.
“The discussions we are having now is what we can do to strengthen the Philippines’s external defense to push through with marine activities such as fishing, exploration of oil and gas,” she said.
But she said the US is not making a permanent military presence in the Philippines.“We’re sensitive to the feelings of the Filipino people. There will not be permanent [military] bases but joint cooperation with the Philippines [defense],” she said.
Militant students present at the forum heckled “Junk VFA” while Clinton was talking. The television host apologized for the untoward incident but Clinton shrugged it off, saying, “People have the right to express themselves; that is democracy.
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By: With AP, Estrella Torres
Source: Business Mirror, Nov. 16, 2011
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