Manila: President Rodrigo Duterte on Monday called for the withdrawal of USA special forces troops from a group of islands in the southern Philippines, saying their presence could complicate offensives against Islamist militants notorious for beheading Westerners.
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FOREIGN Affairs Secretary Perfecto Yasay left for Washington to meet with US Secretary of State John Kerry, saying his trip was “a sign of good ties” between the US and the Philippines, even as President Rodrigo Duterte kept up his anti-American rhetoric.In a TV interview, Yasay said Duterte’s order for US Special Forces to pull out of Mindanao did not signal a change in foreign policy, particularly toward the Americans.
In another speech late Monday, Duterte said for the first time that he deliberately skipped a meeting between Southeast Asian leaders and Obama at the summit in Laos out of principle.
The firebrand leader launched more verbal salvos on Monday about what he called atrocities under American colonial rule, calling for the pullout of U.S. special forces stationed in the restive south, who he said were complicating counter-insurgency operations.
Duterte’s announcement comes just one day after he demanded US troops leave the Southern Philippines to avoid further agitating the Muslim militants on Mindanao.
Over the weekend, Duterte declared that his administration will adopt an “independent foreign policy”, after having earlier threatened to pull the Philippines out of the United Nations following criticism of his campaign against illegal drugs, which has seen the killing of more than 2,000 suspects.
Duterte criticized US for its supposed human rights violations after Washington raised concern on the reported extrajudicial killings of suspected drug personalities in the Philippines amid the government’s war on illegal drugs.
By June the Pentagon had also deployed warplanes and about 120 personnel to the northern Philippines for short-term training missions aimed at ensuring Filipino and us access to the South China Sea.
Previously, about 500-600 United States personnel rotated through the Mindanao region but in 2014, then-defence secretary Voltaire Gazmin said this would be cut back to 200.
In April, the Filipino navy began joint South China Sea naval patrols with the U.S. as Washington responded to Chinese actions in the waterway, including building artificial islands over disputed reefs.
Duterte has had an uneasy relationship with the US since becoming president in June and has been openly critical of American security policies.
Duterte said as “long as we stay with America, we will never have peace in [Mindanao]”. Details of the current US military presence in the south were not immediately available.
In an attempt to deter China, Washington and Manila enacted the Enhanced Defence Cooperation Agreement shortly before Duterte was sworn in, giving the United States rotational access to five bases in the Philippines.
He also stressed that Duterte’s government would honor the current defense agreements, including the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement signed between Washington and Manila in 2014 that give the U.S. rotational access to at least five bases in the Philippines, one of them in Mindanao.
“We have not officially contacted by the Philippine authority regarding President Duterte’s statements”, Koscina told reporters Tuesday morning at the US Embassy in Manila.
“We have a long productive history with the Philippines”.
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The U.S. holds great influence with the Filipino military, which operates in close collaboration with U.S. Special Forces troops stationed in the country.
