Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. said Monday the Philippines and the United States would meet before the end of February to discuss the fate of the US-PH Visiting Forces Agreement, which was suspended by President Rodrigo Duterte last year.
Locsin said he was limiting the issues that both parties would tackle that would pave the way for a possible agreement.
“I am narrowing down the issues and soon we will meet in the last week of February and iron out whatever differences we have and come to an agreement,” Locsin said in an interview with ABS-CBN News Channel.
Locsin did not provide details on the issues that are the subject of the talks. He also did not provide details as to the venue and level of the meeting.
In February last year, Duterte ordered the abrogation of the VFA, which allows American soldiers to regularly train with their Filipino counterparts in the country, after the US cancelled the visa of his close aide and former police chief now senator Ronald Dela Rosa.
The US did not specify the reason for revoking Dela Rosa’s visa, but many believed that it was due to his involvement in Duterte's deadly war on drugs, which killed at least 6,000.
But Manila suspended the VFA's termination process on June 1, citing “political and other developments in the region.”
Then in November last year, Duterte decided to extend for another six months the suspension of the pact’s termination amid lingering tensions in the disputed South China Sea.
According to Locsin, the President’s decision would enable both sides “to find a more enhanced, mutually beneficial, mutually agreeable, and more effective and lasting arrangement on how to move forward in our mutual defense.”
“The past four years have changed the South China Sea from one of uncertainty about great powers’ intentions to one of predictability and resulting stability with regard to what can and cannot be done, what will and will not be acceptable with regard to the conduct of any protagonist in the South China Sea. Clarity and strength have never posed a risk. It is confusion and indecision that aggravate risk,” Locsin said in an earlier statement.
The VFA governs the treatment of US servicemen in military units and defense personnel who are in the Philippine territory for short periods for joint military exercises approved by both the Philippine and US governments.
It entered into force on May 27, 1999, eight years after the closure of US military bases in the Philippines in 1991. It was negotiated and signed during the time of President Fidel Ramos and ratified during President Joseph Estrada’s time.
In the same interview, Locsin admitted new US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, in his recent talks with him, had reaffirmed Washington’s commitment to come to the defense of the Philippines in the event of an external attack.
“(Sec. Blinken) reaffirmed that… it was the most precise formulation I ever heard of the US defense commitment,” he said.