Kenney: US troop pullout unlikely
By Julie Alipala
Mindanao Bureau
First Posted 20:28:00 11/25/2008
Filed Under: Foreign affairs & international relations, Military, Conflicts (general)
ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines -- American military forces are going to stay in the Philippines despite the demand by some sectors for their immediate pullout from the country, US Ambassador to the Philippines Kristie Kenney said on Tuesday.
Kenney said it is unlikely for US forces to pull out from the country, given that American President-elect Barack Hussein Obama has reiterated his country's [commitment to its] partnership with the Philippine government.
"The partnership here is going strong for so many years. The President-elect has already called President [Gloria Macapagal] Arroyo to assure [her about] US relations with the Philippines," Kenney told reporters here Monday.
"It's the Armed Forces of the Philippine who will suggest whether they need more or less troops on a temporary basis," Kenney explained.
But Herbert Docena of Focus on the Global South said Obama's election to the US presidency "testifies to the rejection by the American people of Bush's militarist war on terror."
Docena and several other groups campaigning against the stay of American forces are appealing to the new American president "to heed his people's clamor for peace by withdrawing troops in the Philippines."
Colonel Willian Coultrup, Joint Special Operations Task Force Philippines commander, said the US government could not ascertain if there are plans to withdraw troops from different parts of the world.
He said any changes in the plans of the US military will happen in January "once the new president is sworn in."
Professor Octavio Dinampo, Sulu's Bantay Ceasefire chair and co-convener of the Mindanao Peoples' Caucus, said Kenney's statement was "a tacit admission that US troops are here to stay for good in their various bases within the AFP camps."
"Ambassador Kenney and Colonel Coultrup are experts in double talk. When they claim that the US stay depends on the AFP…how can it drive the US away when the AFP itself is assuring them to stay permanently?" Dinampo said.
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