Edca: Aquino insisted on consent provision

MANILA, Philippines—The new defense agreement between the Philippines and the United States took a long time to complete because President Aquino insisted on Philippine approval of all US military activities and the hardware that the Americans would bring into the country.

It was the insistence by the Philippine panel, taking orders from the President, to include the Mutual Defense Board (MDB) and the Security Engagement Board (SEB) as the approving bodies that caused a deadlock in the negotiations last year, a ranking government official told the Inquirer last week.

The source said the agreement was the only defense accord the United States had with an ally that carries a consent provision.

“With respect to storage, with respect to the types of matériel, we needed to know what [the Americans] would bring in. We would know what these are, then approve it through the MDB and the SEB,” the official said.

The two boards will also assess beforehand the construction of US infrastructure in Philippine military camps, the storage of US military hardware, called “prepositioning,” and “other related activities.”

The official, who preferred anonymity for lack of authority to talk to journalists, is familiar with the negotiations that took eight months.

“They reached a stalemate on the consenting mechanism because generally they (Americans) wanted to have as much leeway as possible. But [the Philippine side] insisted that any infrastructure should be for the betterment of the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines), [it should be] in line with our priorities,” the official said.

“That’s what dragged the talks out,” the official added.

Military cooperation

The Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (Edca) is a framework agreement designed to further military cooperation between the Philippines and the United States.

It gives the US forces temporary access to selected Philippine military camps and allow them to preposition fighter jets and ships.

The agreement does not specify how many additional US troops will be deployed “on temporary and rotational basis,” but officials from both sides will determine the number depending on the scale of joint military activities to be held in Philippine camps.

The agreement was signed on April 28, hours before the arrival of US President Barack Obama in Manila for an overnight visit on the last leg of a tour of the Asia-Pacific region that also took in Japan, South Korea and Malaysia.

While both parties highlight the security accord’s importance to human assistance and disaster response, among other purposes, the agreement is widely viewed as a deterrent to China’s increasing aggressiveness in claiming territories in the South China Sea, including islands, islets and shoals in the West Philippine Sea, the waters within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

The negotiations ran into an impasse in November, after five rounds of discussions between the Philippine and American negotiators.

Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin told reporters that there were differences involving Philippine control and access to temporary US facilities that would be set up in Philippine military bases.

Two boards

The MDB, created under the Mutual Defense Treaty, and the SEB, formed under the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), are effective, the source said.

On its website, the VFA Commission defines the MDB, established in 1958, as a “continuing intergovernment machinery for direct liaison and consultation between appropriate Philippine and US authorities on military matters of mutual concern.”

The SEB, on the other hand, was created through the 2006 Romulo-Kenney Exchange of notes to complement the MDB.

The SEB provides “a framework and mechanism for direct and continuing liaison and consultation on nontraditional security concerns, such as but not limited to terrorism, transnational crimes, maritime security and safety, and natural and man-made disasters, between the appropriate Philippine and US authorities.”

Officials from the AFP and the US Pacific Command hold MDB-SEB meetings every year.

The official said the two boards would deal with the operational details that the public, the media and the agreement’s critics wanted to know, including the number of US troops that would be deployed to the Philippines.

Edca defended

In a separate interview, Ambassador to Malaysia J. Eduardo Malaya, a member of the Philippine negotiating panel, defended the agreement, saying “it was not a sellout.”

“We worked very hard to ensure that our interests are protected,” Malaya said.

For one, the United States wanted to have a longer time frame for the agreement, “understandably for their ROI (return of investment), but the Philippines insisted on a 10-year duration because it was more manageable and more acceptable to the public,” Malaya said.

The United States also gave in to the Philippines’ insistence that all infrastructure that would be built in Philippine military camps would eventually be turned over to the AFP, he said.

Malaya said the Philippines also insisted on “robust environmental provisions” as well as use of Philippine suppliers and services for US procurement requirements.

Environmental provision

Malaya reiterated that the agreement would not lead to the establishment of permanent US bases in the Philippines.

He said the US forces would not have exclusive use of Philippine camps and Philippine laws would prevail over the areas that the Americans would use.

The Americans will have exclusive use of their military hardware “understandably because they own them,” he said.