The Philippines yesterday said that a politician who was once jailed for coup plotting had been in secret talks with China over a territorial row, as the tactic appeared to backfire amid bitter infighting.
Philippine Senator Antonio Trillanes had been “authorized” to hold back-channel talks with Chinese officials to settle a row over competing claims to the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, a spokesman for Philippine President Benigno Aquino III said.
Taiwan also lays claim to the shoal, which it calls Huangyan Island (黃岩島).
However the appointment caused a deep rift with Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario, who had been officially in charge of negotiations with China and was excluded from the back-channel talks.
Trillanes claimed he had been responsible for easing tensions with China after the dispute erupted in April and accused the country’s top diplomat of “treason” because of his allegedly aggressive tactics.
“Right now there is no more crisis involving Scarborough, but we were nearly brought to war. That was a treasonous act [by Del Rosario],” Trillanes told Agence France-Presse yesterday, repeating a claim he made on local radio.
He said public statements made by Del Rosario accusing China of bullying the Philippines nearly led to open confrontation.
Trillanes said he had met “top Chinese officials” at least 15 times in Manila and in Beijing since May.
In a televised interview on Monday, Del Rosario said back-channel talks “were doing more harm than good,” although he did not name Trillanes.
After the row spilled out to the local media, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda sought to limit the fall-out at a press conference yesterday.
“I can categorically say that the secretary of foreign affairs has the trust and confidence of the president,” Lacierda told reporters.
Lacierda also read a statement from Trillanes saying the improved situation concerning the Scarborough Shoal was due to “collaborative efforts” with Del Rosario.
However, he said he could not answer questions as to why Aquino had appointed Trillanes as an extra negotiator.
The dispute between China and the Philippines began in April, when ships from both nations engaged in a stand-off at the Scarborough Shoal. The shoal is an outcrop of rocks about 230km from the western coast of the Philippines’ main island of Luzon.
A former navy lieutenant, Trillanes was among the leaders of two failed coups in 2003 and 2007 against then-Philippine president Gloria Arroyo.
He won a senate seat in 2007 from a jail cell while on trial for rebellion. He was subsequently granted amnesty by Aquino, a fierce critic of Arroyo, before the trial ended.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
RSS