Aquino visit expected to boost PH-US ties

NEW YORK CITY—An executive of Asia Society regards President Benigno Aquino III’s visit here as a timely step toward strengthening ties between the Philippines and the United States amid the territorial dispute between Manila and Beijing.

The view was expressed by Jaime Metzl, executive vice president of Asia Society, who added that President Aquino was doing a “great job’’ with only over a year into his administration.

Metzl will meet the President Tuesday night (Wednesday morning in Manila) when Mr. Aquino speaks before the Asia Society on his administration’s domestic and foreign policy thrusts.

President Aquino was expected to arrive here at 5:45 p.m. Monday from San Francisco to begin his three-day official visit to this city and Washington DC where he has lined up a chockful of meetings with world leaders, businessmen, policy makers and members of Filipino communities.

Asia Society is an organization founded by John Rockefeller III in 1956 to promote greater knowledge of Asia in the US and continues to this day to feature heads of Asian governments and business and policy leaders in Asia in its conferences.

In an interview with Radio and Television Malacañang, Metzl said Manila needed to tighten its partnership with Washington especially when the “Philippines is finding itself in a very tense situation, particularly with regard to the South China Sea.’’

Metzl added, “While the Philippines needs to engage with China, this is also a time where the Philippines and the US need to come together as never before to strengthen our alliance as a partnership of equals. And I think President Aquino’s visit to the US is an important step in that process.’’

Mr. Aquino’s visit to the US came only weeks after his state visit to China which Malacañang said resulted in $13 billion in potential investments and an agreement that the two nations would peacefully resolve their conflicting territorial claims in the South China Sea, which Manila is now calling West Philippine Sea.

Asked what he thought the US role should be amid the dispute given that Manila had been a staunch ally of Washington, Metzl said that he and the Asia Society believed the two countries would remain to be strongly allied to each other.

He pointed out that the two had “overlapping interests,’’ such as their “deep commitment to the free navigation of the oceans and the seas according to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.’’

That is why, he added, there were “concerns in the Philippines as there are in the US about China’s claims and its behavior in the South China Sea.’’

Metzl also said that his group sought “to raise the profile of the Philippines,’’ which he noted was “a critically important country both in Asia and the world.’’

“President Aquino has done a great job in his first year in office …and we would like to celebrate…the great start that President Aquino has made,’’ he said.