US and Philippines happy to keep on defying China

From the People's Daily Morning Star (Feb 4): US and Philippines happy to keep on defying China

THE US ambassador to the Philippines indicated yesterday that the two nations’ forces would continue to traverse Spratly Islands waters and airspace in defiance of Chinese territorial claims.

Ambassador Philip Goldberg said the US and the Philippines both had deep interest in ensuring freedom of navigation and refused to rule out joint patrols in the disputed South China Sea archipelago.

“I am not going to announce beforehand what we do in terms of freedom of navigation,” Mr Goldberg told a media forum.

“But suffice it to say that the United States will follow international law, will continue to enjoy our rights under international law to sail through international waters or fly to international air space.”

Filipino Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said last week that officials discussing possible joint patrols were looking at an area within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.

While the US is not among the six nations laying claims to parts of the two island chains, it has aggressively confronted China over the issue as part of Barack Obama’s “Pivot to Asia” policy.

US warships have twice violated China’s claimed territorial waters off islands in the Spratly and Paracel archipelagoes since October.

Earlier last year a US radio spy plane flew over one of the islands, prompting a challenge from military air traffic controllers there.

Manila protested when a commercial Chinese aircraft landed recently on one of several reefs Beijing has built up to islands through land reclamation.

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/a-9018-US-and-Philippines-happy-to-keep-on-defying-China