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By JIM GOMEZ and MARI YAMAGUCHIMANILA, Philippines
The leaders of Japan and the Philippines agreed Friday to start negotiations for a key defense pact that would allow their troops to enter each other’s territory for joint military exercises. The move is part of efforts to strengthen their alliance in the face of China’s alarming assertiveness in the region.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who is on a two-day visit to Manila, also announced after holding talks with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr that a coastal surveillance radar would be given to the Philippines through a grant. The country is the first beneficiary of a newly launched Japanese security assistance program for allied militaries in the region.
Additional Japanese patrol vessels, defense equipment and radars would be provided to strengthen the Philippines’ law enforcement capability at sea, Kishida said. Japan has supplied a dozen patrol ships in recent years to the Philippines, which are now largely using them to defend its territorial interest in the disputed South China Sea.
Japan has had a longstanding territorial dispute with China over islands in the East China Sea. There has been a series of tense confrontations, meanwhile, between Chinese and Philippine coast guard and navy ships in the disputed South China Sea.
Two weeks ago, China’s ships separately blocked then hit a Philippine coast guard vessel and a supply boat near the disputed Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea. Japan immediately expressed its strong support to the Philippines and the United States renewed its warning that it’s obligated to defend its treaty ally if Filipino forces come under an armed attack in the contested waters.
“We shared serious concerns about the situation in the East China Sea and the South China Sea and that attempt to unilaterally change the status quo by force is unacceptable,” Kishida said, through a translator, in a televised news conference with Marcos on Friday night.
Marcos said the proposed defense pact to be negotiated by the Philippines with Japan, called the Reciprocal Access Agreement, would be beneficial “both to our defense and military personnel and to maintaining peace and stability in our region.”
On Saturday, Kishida will become the first Japanese premier to address a joint session of the Philippine congress, underlining how the Asian nations' ties have transformed since Japan’s brutal occupation of the Philippines in World War II.
He's scheduled to visit a Japanese-funded Manila subway project Saturday and board one of a dozen Japanese-built coast guard patrol ships docked in Manila before leaving for Malaysia.
"We look forward to the address of a leader of a nation that is a robust trading partner, a strong security ally, a lending hand during calamities and an investor in Philippine progress,” Senate President Juan Miguel Zubiri said.
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