Another US official reiterated that there were only a handful of special forces in Mindanao limited to liaison roles.
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Koscina said they will continue to work together in many areas on mutual interest like the two-day disaster preparedness regional media seminar joined by some members of the media across the country which ends today. We might as well give it up.
Abella said “Having ties with the Americans are therefore also suspect in their intentions regarding peace in Mindanao”. “I will not allow it because I do not want my country to be involved in a hostile act”, he said.
But the country’s foreign minister quickly sought to alleviate U.S. concerns Tuesday saying that U.S. -Philippines security deals remain intact.
“I purposely did not attend the bilateral talks between ASEAN countries and the president of the United States”, Duterte said in a speech to police and military personnel.
The Philippines moved to shore up relations with the United States on Tuesday with guarantees that a treaty between them would be honored and that security ties were “rock solid”, despite President Rodrigo Duterte’s railings against Washington.
Mr Duterte also said yesterday he was considering acquiring defence equipment from Russian Federation and China. Previous Philippine president Benigno Aquino’s administration had taken the dispute to global arbitration at The Hague.
Like other security pronouncements, Duterte did not provide details, but his rejection for joint patrols apparently goes against such an arrangement announced in April by the US and the Philippine defense chiefs.
In a speech in Malacañang on Monday, Duterte also blamed the U.S. for inflaming Muslim insurgencies in the region. He also wants to reorient the country’s US -centric military policy. He added he opposes Filipino forces accompanying foreign powers like the USA and China in joint patrols which could entangle the Philippines in hostilities.
“You just can not (lecture) a president of a sovereign state. It would threaten the whole position in the Philippines”, Thayer said.
Carter insisted that the USA did not intend to be provocative and was “trying to tamp down tensions here”.
He even denied any change in the country’s foreign policy with the United States, adding that Duterte was only trying to save the lives of the Americans who could be targeted by Islamist groups such as Abu Sayyaf.
Duterte said during an oath-taking ceremony for state officials on Monday that U.S. special forces in Zamboanga “must go”, because they could become high-value targets for the Islamist Abu Sayyaf rebels, who are notorious for kidnapping and beheading foreigners.
Washington later said it had not received a formal request to remove USA military personnel.
But several Philippine-based commentators welcomed the “shift away from dependence and subservience to America”, according to The Manila Times. “That’s certainly something that the Filipino people are well aware of”, he further added.
Zachary Abuza, a Southeast Asian security expert at the National War College in the United States, said Duterte’s actions towards the USA were worrying.
“It will be hard for the United States to turn a blind eye to such remarks; the USA will have to be content with the new reality that the Philippine government wants to lead an independent foreign policy”.
“This nationalist narrative has always been there”.
While the majority of the USA military presence withdrew in 2015, U.S. officials said that some troops have remained in an advisory role.
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“Also [Duterte] is not a classical leftist, he’s not a communist, not even a classically social democrat really, but he uses this nationalist narrative”, he said.
