Manila: US and Filipino military officials have held initial talks to assess the future of mutual defense agreements of their countries, including revising in possible movements that have made China alert, the Head of the Philippine defense said Thursday.
The 1951 agreement conducted the United States and the Philippines to come to other assistance if there was an attack.
American officials have repeatedly convinced their Philippine counterparts that they will respect their agreement’s obligations if the Philippine forces, ships and planes come attacked in the dissipated South China Sea, including by China.
Delfin Defense Secretary Lorenzana said the agreement could be canceled, replaced or revised after a few decades.
The Alliance of Agreement is the oldest in Asia.
“The initial discussion has been made between the second military official to reach several consensus on how to move forward,” Lorenzana said in a video recording welcome in the online forum that discussed the problems surrounding the agreement.
“While the US welcomed the idea of reviewing MDT, an outsider didn’t.
When I first restarted the idea of reviewing MDT, the former Chinese Ambassador came to me and said, ‘Please don’t touch MDT, leave it away.
That’s,'” said Lorenzana , without describing.
A Philippine diplomat has told the Associated Press that China may worry about the Philippines and US officials may include provisions that can threaten Beijing’s security interests if the agreement is changed.
They can recognize, for example, the 2016 international arbitration decision that replies with a spacious Chinese territorial claim in the South China Sea on a historic reason, said the diplomat, who speaks with anonymous requirements due to lack of authority to speak in public.
China and the Philippines, together with Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei have been locked in a tense deadlock over territorial disputes in busy waterways.
There are fears that a boiling long dispute can trigger a war that can damage the crowded economy in Asia and so on.
Lorenzana said there had been suggestions to revise the agreement to overcome current regional security issues, including the use of Chinese civilian militias instead of military forces to seize regions in disputed waters to avoid military disputes that could give the US and the Philippines to be the reason for activating their agreement.
Chinese Embassy officials did not immediately react to Lorenzana’s comments.
China has warned the US to not intervene in what he said was Asia’s pure dispute that the government in the region was trying to decide peacefully through negotiations.
Washington did not wear claims in disputed waters but had stated that the peaceful resolution of disputes, along with freedom of navigation and overflights in the contested waterways, were in their national interests.
US, Philippines assess defense agreements, China alert
