MANILA, Philippines—The Philippines’ most outspoken senator Sunday said she believed US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was coming to Manila because of concerns over calls to scrap the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), and warned against US pressure on President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to stick to the accord.

Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago also said Ms Arroyo was aware that junking the VFA would bode ill for the Philippines as the United States might retaliate by trimming or withdrawing US military assistance and lowering trade quotas.

Clinton is scheduled to visit Manila on Nov. 12-13 before joining US President Barack Obama at a summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum to be held in Singapore in the next two days.

Concerns over the activities of visiting US troops in the country and “vague” provisions impelled the Philippine Senate in September to pass a resolution urging Ms Arroyo to notify the United States of the Philippines’ desire to renegotiate the accord and, if Washington refuses, to scrap it altogether.

“They’re concerned about (the Senate resolution) and I am afraid they will pressure our President to disregard a resolution of the Philippine Senate,” Santiago said in an interview on radio dzBB.

Santiago, who authored the resolution, said she did not believe Clinton’s pronouncements that her two-day visit beginning this Friday was to show solidarity with Filipinos badly battered by two back-to-back storms recently.

“I do not believe that. She’s coming here because of the VFA,” Santiago said in Filipino.

But Santiago, who chairs the Senate foreign relations committee, said she did not think Ms Arroyo would act on the anti-VFA resolution as this would jeopardize RP-US relations.

“If President Arroyo does this, she knows this would spell trouble for the country [at a time] when it is supposed to be busy preparing for the 2010 elections,” Santiago said.

She also said Ms Arroyo would also probably think twice about junking the VFA because some people might think she was interfering in what should be the job of the next administration.

Don’t meddle in polls

The 10-year-old VFA has evoked a few political storms. Filipino nationalists demanded its abrogation four years ago following disputes over custody of US Lance Cpl. Daniel Smith after he was accused of raping the Filipina “Nicole.”

The prolonged presence in the southern Philippines of US Special Forces training Filipino soldiers in fighting the Abu Sayyaf bandits has also spurred calls for the scrapping of the military accord.

Asked about reports that the May 2010 Philippine elections and peaceful transfer of power might crop up in Clinton’s talks in Manila, Santiago said: “Why do Americans want to talk about our elections? They don’t have any role here.”

The senator said the problem with Washington was that it continued to get itself enmeshed in the state of affairs of other countries in its desire to “fulfill its self-created role as the policeman of the world.”

“They should leave our elections to us,” Santiago said, citing how the United States had interfered in the internal affairs of Vietnam and now in Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran.

“We’re a small nation. They should leave us alone,” she said.

Another issue likely to be discussed with Clinton is the Moro insurgency.

“We always welcome anybody who could help, whether from Malaysia or the Organization of the Islamic Conference, or other countries like Japan and the US,” said deputy presidential spokesperson Gary Olivar.

MILF hope

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) said it hoped Clinton would visit Mindanao so she could see for herself the situation in the region.

“We join the entire Filipinos in welcoming her. It would be good if she can proceed to Mindanao to look into the situation of people affected by the conflict, as a gesture of goodwill,” MILF vice chair for political affairs Ghazali Jaafar said on Sunday.
Clinton’s visit is expected to pave the way for a one-on-one meeting between Ms Arroyo and US President Barack Obama on the sidelines of the APEC summit.

“If there would be an opportunity for sideline talks between the two, we would seize it because we continue to dialogue with our American friends on many things, beginning with the arrival of Secretary Clinton this week,” Olivar said in Filipino.

Olivar and Anthony Golez, another deputy presidential spokesperson, both declined to comment on whether the controversial VFA would be on the agenda of an Arroyo-Obama meeting.

Changing US image

The APEC summit in Singapore will mark an Obama attempt to show the region and a rising China that the United States is not in decline nor distracted by multiple crises elsewhere.

In a flurry of summits and snatched sightseeing, Obama will leverage his personal popularity in a region where he spent childhood years, and which is now leading the world out of recession while the crippled US economy struggles.

Obama will begin his tour in Japan, attend the APEC summit in Singapore, have a rare encounter with a leader from Burma (Myanmar) at a historic US-Asean (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) meeting, pay his first visit to China and go to South Korea.

Obama’s top Asia policy aide, Jeffrey Bader, said the previous Bush administration saw relations with Asia mostly through a prism of its global anti-terror campaign—an approach Obama will seek to change.

As a newly confident China expanded its regional clout, Washington’s prestige suffered from the unsustainable spending and borrowing binge that triggered the worst economic crisis since the 1930s.

“I believe reports of America’s demise, as they say, are considerably exaggerated and will look rather foolish in a few years,” said Bader, director of Asian Affairs on the National Security Council. With reports from Christian V. Esguerra; Associated Press; Agence France-Presse; Jeoffrey Maitem, Inquirer Mindanao; and Inquirer Research