PH’s Del Rosario, Gazmin to meet with Clinton, Panetta on Apr. 30

MANILA, Philippines – President Aquino met with Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert Del Rosario and Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin on Monday, but Palace officials said the meeting had nothing to do with Philippines’s current conflict with China over Scarborough Shoal.

Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda said that the President met with Del Rosario and Gazmin about their meeting with their American counterparts — US State Secretary Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta or the meeting dubbed as “2+2.”

The meeting will be held in Washington DC on April 30. It will be the first ever meeting between defense and state secretaries of the Philippines and the US. The US has this dialog with counterparts in Australia, Japan and Korea.

Lacierda said that according to Gazmin, the Scarborough Shoal incident was not taken up in the meeting with the President.

The Philippines and China have yet to resolve their current impasse at Scarborough Shoal, with the two countries still stationing their respective vessels on the Shoal.

The shoal, called Panatag shoal, is within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, but China claims it belongs to them historically.

The standoff happened two weeks ago when two Chinese maritime surveillance ships were deployed to stop Philippine authorities from arresting Chinese fishermen found to be poaching giant clams and corals in the area.