In a separate meeting also on the Apec sidelines, US President Barack Obama assured Aquino of continued and increased assistance for the Philippine military, considered one of the region’s ill-equipped, highlighted by a $79 million allocation for 2016.
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Romana said Washington’s decision to send destroyers close to Beijing’s artificial islands in the South China Sea was an obvious signal of that backing.
The summit’s host, Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, urged his counterparts to step up efforts to realise a vision that many experts view as hard, if not impossible, to achieve.
According to Donald R. Rothwell of Australia’s ABC News, if the USA launches naval operations in the South China Sea it will involve a number of American warships to emphasize what they call “freedom of navigation” within 12 miles of the islands China has claimed. Tokyo has no claims in the waterway, but worries about China’s growing military reach into sea lanes through which much of Japan’s ship-borne trade passes.
Beijing’s buildup has created tension between China and several of its neighbors, including the Philippines and Vietnam.
Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe’s policies, including increasing the defense budget, lifting a ban on arms exports, visiting a shrine that memorialises Japan’s war dead, along with convicted World War II criminals and reinterpreting the pacifist constitution to allow Japan to defend other countries, have sparked concern in China and South Korea.
So I guess as backdrop, I would like to turn this summit meeting into an occasion where we add a new introductory chapter for our renewed Japan-U.S. cooperation, through which we effectively utilize our robust alliance for the peace, stability and prosperity regionally – namely in the Asia Pacific – and also, eventually, globally.
Obama said he had invited leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) to the United States, insisting that good ties with Asian nations were “absolutely critical” to USA security. The night before, Islamist militants killed 19 people in an attack on a hotel in Mali on Friday before Malian commandos stormed the building and rescued 170 people, many of them foreigners.
Washington has said the move was meant to stress the right to free passage in waters China claims, but Liu called it a “political provocation”.
This is the second time on Day One of the ASEAN and related summits that Aquino raised the maritime row.
China, which claims nearly the entire energy-rich South China Sea, has been transforming reefs into artificial islands in the Spratly archipelago and building airfields and other facilities on a few of them.
He said predominantly Islamic countries such as Malaysia have a duty to expose as lies the “ideology propagated by these extremists that is the cause of this sadistic violence”. “There has never been any problem with navigational freedom in the South China Sea”.
“The Philippines has always adhered to the rule of law, and our decision to resort to arbitration reflects our belief that it is a transparent, friendly, durable, and peaceful dispute settlement mechanism that can bring stability to the region…”
Malaysia has deployed extraordinary security measures around Kuala Lumpur as leaders from 18 countries, including Obama, arrived for the series of summits.
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Founded in 1967, ASEAN consists of the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.
