China and the Philippines are to negotiate a military protocol to avoid maritime “miscalculations,” Philippine Secretary of National Defense Delfin Lorenzana said yesterday, following a brief standoff near a Philippine-occupied island in a disputed part of the South China Sea.
Lorenzana said the Philippines in August tried to put up makeshift structures on a sand bar about 4km off Thitu Island (Jhongye Island, 中業島) in the Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島), but China objected and sent ships to the area.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte sought to defuse tensions by ordering troops to pull out. Construction was stopped.
“We intend to sit down with China to draft and agree on a protocol to resolve immediately any incident,” he said, adding that he hopes talks could start this year.
“We hope to avoid any miscalculations in the disputed areas so we need the protocol to act on any problems, because we cannot wait for higher authorities to decide,” he said. “Anything can happen anytime, so we want commanders on the ground to decide to prevent violence.”
Lorenzana said Philippine marines were sent to a sand bar to build shelter structures made of light materials for Philippine families and fishermen. There were also Chinese fishermen on the 500m2 sand bar, he said.
“China complained because the Philippines was occupying new features, which it said was a violation of a bilateral agreement,” Lorenzana said. “We pulled out and no structures were built there, but both sides agreed there would be no new occupation.”
The Philippines has pressed ahead with US$25 million of upgrades to Thitu Island.
A small community of Filipinos has lived there since the 1970s, ostensibly to prop up the nation’s claim, although conditions are basic compared to those enjoyed by Vietnamese and Chinese on other islands in the Spratly chain.
The Philippines has defended the upgrades, saying other nations have long been doing the same.
China has rapidly built small cities on nearby artificial islands and installed missile systems, radars and aircraft hangars on three of them.
Xinhua news agency said coastguard officials of both countries had met on Tuesday to discuss exchanging visits and cooperating to prevent cross-border crimes.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
RSS