Brand-new limousines that will ferry 16 heads of state rolled out of government depots in the central Philippines island of Cebu yesterday as the hosts made final security preparations ahead of two East Asian summits later this week.
With police cars and escorts' sirens blaring, dozens of the luxury cars stopped mid-morning traffic in the Philippines' second-largest city as security officials traversed main roads between major venues and hotels to be used for the meetings.
The ASEAN summit and the larger East Asia summit were originally scheduled for early December last year, but were rescheduled ostensibly due to a typhoon. Warnings by key western governments of an imminent terrorist attack in Cebu also reportedly figured in the decision to postpone the summits.
PHOTO: EPA
"It [the dry run] went off without a hitch," Antonio Billones, deputy director-general for the Philippine National Police and chief of the ASEAN task force on security, said as he monitored the phased arrival of the convoys on the front steps of the Cebu International Convention Center, a key venue.
A second dry run was scheduled for late yesterday, before the arrival of ministers of ASEAN members Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam and regional trading partners Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea, and New Zealand, Billones added.
Foreign and trade ministers will start arriving today, while the leaders begin flying in tomorrow, officials said.
"We're doing this to make sure everything will be okay," said Roberto Capco, a senior aide to President Gloria Arroyo.
As the first of the convoys arrived, workmen stopped painting colorful Mondrian-style rectangular patterns on the driveway in front of the main entrance and stacked their pails of paint in a pile.
Capco described the repaint job as cosmetic, insisting that the main repair work had been finished on the US$11.2 million facility that had leaked embarrassingly when Cebu first tried to stage the summit last month.
"Work on all the venues have been completed. What is important is all the people expected are here," he said.
He described the hosts' feelings as "like somebody expecting his wife to give birth to a baby."
Australia, Britain and Canada still have travel warnings in effect for Cebu, citing possible terrorist attacks, but the government said there were no substantiated threats.
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