U.S. TO BOOST PRESENCE IN PHILIPPINES

The United States and the Philippines today announced plans to expand America’s military presence in the Southeast Asian nation, with access to four more bases as they seek to deter China’s increasingly aggressive actions toward Taiwan and in the disputed South China Sea.

The agreement was reached as U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was in the country for talks about deploying U.S. forces and weapons in more Philippine military camps.

In a joint announcement by the Philippines and the U.S., the two said they had decided to accelerate the full implementation of their socalled Enhanced Defense Cooperation

Agreement, which aims to support combined training, exercises and interoperability.

As part of the agreement, the U.S. has allocated $82 million toward infrastructure improvements at five current EDCA sites, and expand its military presence to four new sites in “strategic areas of the country,” according to the statement.

Austin arrived in the Philippines on Tuesday from South Korea, where he said the U.S. would increase its deployment of advanced weapons such as fighter jets and bombers to the Korean Peninsula to bolster joint training with South Korean forces in response to North Korea’s growing nuclear threat.

In the Philippines, Washington’s oldest treaty ally in Asia and a key front in the U.S. battle against terrorism, Austin visited southern Zamboanga city and met Filipino generals and a small contingent of U.S. counterterrorism forces based in a local military camp, regional Philippine military commander Lt. Gen. Roy Galido said.

Prior to Austin’s announcement, the U.S. opened an embassy in the Solomon Islands today in further moves to counter China’s push into the Pacific.

The embassy in the capital, Honiara, is starting small, with a charge d’affaires, a couple of State Department staff and a handful of local employees.