FORMER President Fidel Ramos flew to China on Monday, but before doing so expressed confidence that the Chinese government will mend its ties with the Philippines amid their ongoing dispute in the West Philippine Sea.
Those who accompanied Ramos on his official trip were his wife and former first lady Amelita Ramos, former Interior secretary Rafael Alunan and former ABC network manager in Beijing Chito Santa Romana.
They left Manila on board Philippine Airlines flight PR306 bound for Hong Kong around 2:35 pm.
“The objective is, there is no objective. This is just to renew or rekindle old ties,” Ramos told reporters before he boarded his flight.
“Let’s meet, let’s talk and find out where we stand. But as I told you, our Philippine stand is to make sure there is peace, there is goodwill and there is harmony in our Asia-Pacific neighborhood.
“I can assure you this is the basis of 42 years as a soldier and six years serving as a former President, that no one in the world wants World War III to happen except for some crazy guys.”
Ramos said the Philippines wanted its neighbors to understand that the most dangerous enemies of the world today were no longer people or countries or groups of countries.
“The most deadly universal enemies of mankind are poverty, hunger, the lack of potable water and sanitation, and therefore this gives rise to the most difficult disease or diseases to treat or to counter already. This is affecting the ongoing Rio Olympics,” Ramos said.
“These are some of the messages I’m going to discuss with some of our friends. I am just the icebreaker to warm up again our good friendly neighborly relations with China, and that’s all I have to do and maybe that’s all I can do. But that is a big enough job as I see it and I’ll do my best.”
Ramos said President Rodrigo Duterte did not give him any formal instructions.
“Because this is just a first phase of renewing friendship”•maybe four or five days on the instruction. There are really no instructions because he [Duterte] is busy giving instructions to everybody,” Ramos said.
“What he said was please just renew our friendship with your friends from China, that’s all. But I’m expecting that the formal phase of bilateral talks will take place in the near future between the officials of our countries.”
Last month, President Duterte asked Ramos to serve as a special envoy to China over their territorial dispute in the West Philippine Sea.
Ramos accepted the offer in a private meeting in Davao City.
Ramos, 88, who was President from 1992 to 1998, has had an experience in dealing with China over the West Philippine Sea after Philippine security forces discovered the first military structures on Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands in 1995.
The government issued a formal protest over China’s occupation of the reef and the Philippine Navy arrested 62 Chinese fishermen at Half Moon Shoal, 80 kilometers from Palawan.
A week later, following confirmation from surveillance pictures that the structures were military in nature, Ramos ordered military forces in the region strengthened while China claimed the structures were only shelters for fishermen.