By Jose Katigbak, STAR Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON – The United States should provide the Philippines with badly needed military hardware and any necessary training for its maritime defense in light of heightening tensions in the South China Sea, Robert Warshaw of the Heritage Foundation said.
Protecting freedom of navigation in the South China Sea is clearly in America’s national interest and key to that is the Philippines, he said.
Rotating US forces through Philippine training facilities as well as maintaining the US counterinsurgency training force and observers in Mindanao, should be discussed by the foreign and defense secretaries of both countries at their scheduled 2+2 meeting in Washington on April 30, said Warshaw, research assistant in the Asian Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will meet with Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario and Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin to discuss Philippine defense needs and a military expansion of US forces in the Philippines in addition to a current rotating force of about 600 servicemen in Mindanao.
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