A VISITING forces agreement would have to be ratified by Congress to allow Chinese forces to visit the country for joint war exercises, National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon said Thursday.
“In joint exercises, you must have a visiting forces agreement and probably, a treaty,” Esperon said in a Palace press briefing, after President Rodrigo Duterte said he was open to holding joint exercises with the Chinese Navy, possibly in the Sulu Sea.
Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana earlier said if the government decides to conduct war games with China, a framework must first be developed.
“If troops will go into our territory, either territorial waters or land, we might need a Visiting Forces Agreement,” he added.
He said naval exercises have two purposes: Training the troops and patrolling the South China Sea.
Esperon said that the proposed war games between Filipino and Chinese troops will be beneficial for the country, despite the country’s overlapping claims in the other parts of the sea.
He added that the Sulu Sea was where pirates have staged kidnappings. “If we have a military presence there, it will be good,” he said.
“For now, we don’t have joint patrols with any nation. What we simply have is a trilateral agreement with Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines to cover the Sulu Sea, primarily Tawi-Tawi.”
On Thursday, Malacañang said that President Duterte and Chinese President Xi Jinping made a call for peace and stability in the region amid nuclear threats by North Korea which may disrupt peace in the region.
“First of all, the President affirmed the friendship between Philippines and China as they exchanged views on regional and international developments,” Presidential Spokesman Ernesto Abella said.
“Secondly, and this is very important, the President expressed concerns on the Korean Peninsula. This is a shared concern among Asean leaders and since the Philippines is this year’s chairman, the President also took the initiative to voice the concerns of Asean as well,” Abella said.
He added that Duterte’s aim is to ensure peace in the region given the consequence of a Korean war to Southeast Asia.
“The President really emphasized on the need for restraint in dealing with the Korean Peninsula. Players in the region should push for peace, not war,” he said.
“In a sense, the call was basically for peace and stability in the region,” Abella said.
Duterte and Xi’s phone call came four days after the President’s call with United States President Donald Trump, which focused on North Korea.
Before the Trump call, Duterte said he would ask the US president to consider a more peaceful option.
On Saturday, Duterte said the leaders of Asean are “extremely worried” over the evolving crisis brought about by the latest launch of a ballistic missile by North Korea and asked for prudence on the part of the United States and other stakeholders to spare Asean of the consequences of a possible showdown in the Korean Peninsula.
Despite talk of joint exercises with the Chinese, Esperon said Chinese coast guard vessels harassed and drove away Filipino fishermen in the Union Bank in the Spratly group of islands in the South China Sea, despite Beijing’s denials.
“We got a report that the [Chinese] coast guard fired at our fishermen,” Esperon told reporters in a news briefing. “That’s our position now.”
Esperon added that Manila continues to take note of Chinese incursions within the high seas, including the sending of another note verbale to let Beijing explain the recent harassment of Filipino fishermen.
In a statement Wednesday, Foreign Affairs spokesman Robespierre Bolivar said the Philippine government continues “to urge the Chinese side to refrain from the threat or use of force.”
“We have raised the matter with the Chinese side several times and they informed us that their investigations did not reveal any such incidents,” Bolivar said.
“We have asked them to continue the investigations and to share the results with Philippine authorities,” he added.
Union Bank is within the Philippines’ 200-nautical mile exclusive economic zone as mandated by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
Filipino fishermen have complained that Chinese Coast Guard fired warning shots to drive them away from the area last March.
Esperon called on claimant countries to respect the fishermen’s “traditional fishing grounds” amid overlapping claims in the disputed waters.
“Let’s treat it as traditional fishing grounds, and do not disallow fishermen to fish because what is the South China Sea for? Mankind should benefit from that,” he said. With Vito Barcelo