US-Philippine forces avoid South China Sea during war games in central Luzon

Manila: The United States and the Philippine forces avoided the South China Sea when they held war games in central Luzon, near the scene of the Philippine-China standoff in the Scarborough Shoal, a local paper said.

On April 20, members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, the fire department of the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority (SBMA, based at the former location of the US Naval Base in Subic), and the Hawaii National Guard, held a search and rescue exercises in preparation for the occurrence of earthquake.

"Obviously when disaster happens there's no time to train then. The only time to train is when you get opportunities like this," Capt. Aaron Blanchard, officer in charge of the Hawaii National Guard told Manila Bulletin.

Capt. Ranny Magno, head of SBMA fire department said his men learned a lot from the training which involved various kinds of rescue operations using ropes and collapsed structure.

The exercises, part of the ongoing joint war games between the Philippines and the US, were held at SBMA's Collapsed Structure Search and Rescue Training Facility.

The SBMA, which is being developed by the Philippine government as a Freeport, faces the Subic Bay, 230 kilometres away from Scarborough Shoal where the Philippines and China standoff over the shoal has intensified since it began on April 8.

When the Philippines hosted two of the largest US overseas war facilities, from 1898 to 1991, American soldiers used to train at the Scarborough Shoal.

In 1991, the Philippine Senate rejected the US-initiative to extend the now defunct US-Philippine Military Bases Agreement (MBA), which was the basis of the US presence in the Philippines.

Since then, the Philippine-US relations remained anchored on the 1958 Mutual Defense Treaty, the basis of the request of Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario for US assistance in handling the Philippine-China standoff.

Foreign Affairs Secretary del Rosario has relied on US assistance, which will be voiced out during his discussion with US Secretary of State JHilary Clinton in Washington on April 30.

Issues at the West Philippine Sea (the Philippines name for the South China Sea) and the Panatag Shoal (Philippine name for the Scarborough Shoal) will be discussed, said del Rosario.

"That item (standoff) has been included in the agenda in Washington," Foreign Affairs spokesman Raul Hernandez said.

Philippine Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin will also hold a meeting with US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to "primarily tackle (with the US) modernization issues (of the Philippines)," said Philippine defense spokesman Peter Galvez.

The April 30 meeting is a follow up of the January meeting of US Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Lavoy and their counterparts, Philippine Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Erlinda Basilio and Defense Undersecretary Pio Lorenzo Batino, to expand Philippine-US relations.

At the same time, the US has expressed its desire for a peaceful resolution of the Philippine-China standoff.

Victoria Nuland, US State Department spokesperson, told the Star, "In general, in all of the most recent meetings that Secretary Clinton has had with Chinese counterparts, whether they were here, whether they were in China, whether they were in multilateral fora, she has reiterated our interest in deepening and broadening mechanisms within ASEAN, within regional fora, and bilaterally for solving these things consensually, not by force, calling for restraint by all sides."

Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will meet their counterparts for the fourth round of the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue in Beijing from May 3 to 4.

China, Taiwan. And Vietnam claim the whole of the South China Sea, based on historical right. Brunei, Malaysia, and the Philippines claim parts of the South China Sea, including areas in the Spratly Archipelago, based on the provision of 200 nautical miles exclusive economic zone at countries shoreline, by the United Nations Conference on the Law of the Sea (Unclos).