After over a month of military operation against Agbimuddin Kiram and his men, Malaysian authorities had declared the crisis in Sabah “under control,’’ Philippine officials said on Sunday.
The escalating conflict in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea) has brought some good learning opportunities for the Philippines—from revisiting the country’s defense policies to introducing the public to a weighty concept called “national security,” security experts said.
A confessed backroom negotiator, former National Security Adviser and Director General of the National Security Council Jose Almonte called the back-channeling role “a privilege,” but with responsibilities attached to it.
Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile’s disclosure of Ambassador Sonia Brady’s purported notes of her meeting with Senator Antonio Trillanes IV on the disputed Panatag Shoal may have “compromised” national interest, a University of the Philippines law professor said Saturday.
Spy planes are OK, but then what? Senator Gregorio Honasan called, on Tuesday, for an actual military presence by the United States in the Scarborough Shoal and other disputed areas in the West Philippine Sea to help protect Philippine interests there.
Now that China has sent its own astronauts into space, would it eventually go to the moon and claim it as its territory?
President Benigno Aquino on Wednesday said a Jordanian journalist would be asked to explain why he should not be banned from entering the country again for interviewing Abu Sayyaf bandits without informing local authorities.
The Philippine military expressed pleasure Thursday at the plan of the US government to provide the country with a powerful radar system that could help deter territorial intrusions in the face of a dispute with China over territories in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea).
Most of the Chinese vessels may have left the disputed Scarborough Shoal, but Senator Gregorio Honasan does not consider it a victory for the Philippines.
The obscure 2002 Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (MLSA) between the Philippines and the United States may hold the key to the increased US military access to the country, according to the militant group Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan).
Apparently skeptical of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s declaration that the United States would “remain in the corner of the Philippines,” senators on Thursday said they would review two accords with the United States relating to national security.
Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin has decried as “alarming” the increased Chinese incursions into Philippine-claimed territory in the South China Sea.
