MANILA – The US Senate has unanimously approved Senate Resolution 167, which calls for a peaceful resolution of maritime and territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas. Senate Resolution 167, filed on Monday by Senators Robert Menendez (Democrat, New Jersey), Marco Antonio Rubio (Republican, Florida), and Ben Cardin (Democrat, Maryland), also urges countries […]
The rusty BRP Sierra Madre has been an effective deterrence against further Chinese incursion into Philippine territorial claims. FILE PHOTO BY ABIGAIL KWOK (Editor’s note: Jose Antonio A. Custodio is a security and defense consultant and was a technical adviser for a US defense company working for the US Pacific Command. He also specializes in […]
MANILA, Philippines – The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) confirmed yesterday that unmanned US Navy surveillance planes conduct patrols to help monitor activities in Philippine waters, particularly in the South China Sea. DFA spokesman Raul Hernandez said US drones fly over Philippine waters during joint military exercises with the United States. Hernandez said the joint […]
MANILA, Philippines – China believes the Philippine plan to relocate major air force and navy bases to the former US naval base in Subic Bay in the West Philippine Sea is aimed at increasing pressure on it and bringing in more outside forces to the region. In a report in the state-owned newspaper China Daily, […]
MANILA – A classified government document seen by Kyodo News on Friday confirmed that U.S. Navy surveillance planes conduct routine maritime patrol to monitor activities in the disputed South China Sea. “(There were) confirmed flights of U.S. P3C Orion aircraft over the South China Sea especially (in the contested Spratly Islands),” according to the document. […]
Vice President Joe Biden said the U.S. is pushing China to negotiate quickly with Southeast Asian nations on a code of conduct for the South China Sea, an area that’s a “major, major, major highway of commerce.” China agreed during an Association of Southeast Asian Nations-hosted forum in Brunei late last month to meet with […]
Spanning from the Singapore and Malacca straits to the Strait of Taiwan, the South China Sea is one of the world’s most hotly disputed bodies of water. China lays claim to nearly the entire sea, overlapping with the maritime claims of Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines. With sovereign territory, natural resources, and national […]
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines plans to relocate major air force and navy camps to a former U.S. naval base northwest of Manila to gain faster access to waters being contested by China in the South China Sea, according to the country’s defense chief and a confidential government report. Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said Sunday […]
MANILA, Philippines – The Chinese have transformed the Panganiban (Mischief) Reef in Palawan into a forward naval station with at least one ship docked in the area, a senior security official disclosed yesterday. The official, who asked not to be identified, pointed out that since China’s illegal occupation of Panganiban Reef in 1994, Beijing had […]
The Philippines has protested China’s recent publication of a new “10-dash line” map that places sprawling offshore territories it claims within Beijing’s “national boundaries,” officials said Friday. In a confidential June 7, 2013 note verbale handed to the Chinese Embassy in Manila, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said it “protests the reference to those […]