By Simon Lewis and Karen Lema
MANILA (Reuters) -Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos Jr told U.S. cabinet secretaries Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin on Tuesday that regular engagements between Manila and Washington were needed to ensure “agile” responses to his country’s maritime tensions with China.
U.S. treaty ally the Philippines has repeatedly sparred at sea with China, the main U.S. rival in the Indo-Pacific, this past year, but the two sides have now reached a “provisional arrangement” to ease tensions and manage differences.
Marcos greeted Secretary of State Blinken and Defence Secretary Austin at the Malacanang Palace on Tuesday morning ahead of meetings with their Filipino counterparts, the first such meetings hosted by the Philippines.
“I’m always very happy that these communication lines are very open so that all the things that we are doing together, in terms of our alliance, in terms of the specific context of our situation here, in the West Philippine Sea and in the Indo-Pacific, are continuously examined and re-examined so we are agile in terms of our responses,” Marcos said.
The Philippines has competing claims with China in the waters to its west also known as the South China Sea. China claims 90% of the sea as its sovereign territory.
State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Blinken and Austin discussed with Marcos “their shared commitment to upholding international law in the South China Sea.”
“The two secretaries underscored the United States’ ironclad commitments to the Philippines under our Mutual Defence Treaty,” Miller said in a statement following the meeting.
At the start of the meeting, Marcos said he was “a bit surprised” to see the two secretaries given how “interesting” the U.S. political situation has become, a reference to President Joe Biden ending his re-election campaign this month and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris to take on former President Donald Trump in a November election. Blinken offered Marcos greetings from Harris, as well as from Biden.
Blinken, the top U.S. diplomat, said a “steady drumbeat of very high-level engagements in our countries that are covering the full range of issues and opportunities that bring us together not only security, but also economic.”
(Reporting by Simon Lewis and Karen Lema; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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