The Philippine Senate today ratified a reciprocal access agreement (RAA) with Japan that would allow their militaries to deploy on each other's soil as both countries worry about China's increasingly assertive stance in the region.
The RAA, the first of its kind that Japan has signed in Asia, is to ease the entry of equipment and troops for combat training and disaster response, smoothing military cooperation between Manila and Tokyo.
Photo: EPA-EFE
All 19 senators present at today's session voted to ratify the deal, with Japanese Ambassador Kazuya Endo in attendance at the legislative hall in Manila.
"The ... treaty is deemed ratified," Senate President Francis Escudero said.
The agreement was signed by the defense and foreign ministers of both nations in July, but the deal needed parliament's approval to enter into force.
The Chinese embassy in Manila did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
The Philippines and Japan, two of the US' closest Asian allies, have taken a strong line against what they see as an increasingly assertive China in the East and South China Seas, and voicing concern over tension across the Taiwan Strait.
China claims much of the South China Sea, a conduit for the bulk of northeast Asia's trade with the rest of the world in which Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam also have claims.
Japan has a separate maritime dispute with China in the East China Sea, where the neighbors have repeatedly faced off.
The Philippines has a Visiting Forces Agreement with the US and Australia.
Tokyo, which hosts the biggest concentration of US forces abroad, has similar RAA deals with Australia and Britain, and is negotiating another with France.
DEATH CONSTANTLY LOOMING: Decades of detention took a major toll on Iwao Hakamada’s mental health, his lawyers describing him as ‘living in a world of fantasy’ A Japanese man wrongly convicted of murder who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been awarded US$1.44 million in compensation, an official said yesterday. The payout represents ￥12,500 (US$83) for each day of the more than four decades that Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, most of it on death row when each day could have been his last. It is a record for compensation of this kind, Japanese media said. The former boxer, now 89, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after a tireless campaign by his sister and others. The case sparked scrutiny of the justice system in
The head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic intelligence agency, was sacked yesterday, days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he no longer trusts him, and fallout from a report on the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack. “The Government unanimously approved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s proposal to end ISA Director Ronen Bar’s term of office,” a statement said. He is to leave his post when his successor is appointed by April 10 at the latest, the statement said. Netanyahu on Sunday cited an “ongoing lack of trust” as the reason for moving to dismiss Bar, who joined the agency in 1993. Bar, meant to
Indonesia’s parliament yesterday amended a law to allow members of the military to hold more government roles, despite criticisms that it would expand the armed forces’ role in civilian affairs. The revision to the armed forces law, pushed mainly by Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto’s coalition, was aimed at expanding the military’s role beyond defense in a country long influenced by its armed forces. The amendment has sparked fears of a return to the era of former Indonesian president Suharto, who ex-general Prabowo once served and who used military figures to crack down on dissent. “Now it’s the time for us to ask the
The central Dutch city of Utrecht has installed a “fish doorbell” on a river lock that lets viewers of an online livestream alert authorities to fish being held up as they make their springtime migration to shallow spawning grounds. The idea is simple: An underwater camera at Utrecht’s Weerdsluis lock sends live footage to a Web site. When somebody watching the site sees a fish, they can click a button that sends a screenshot to organizers. When they see enough fish, they alert a water worker who opens the lock to let the fish swim through. Now in its fifth year, the
RSS