Harris to visit Palawan amid disputed sea row
Philippine coast guard to welcome US VP on board one of its patrol ships
That’s as obvious as you can get, that the message they’re trying to impart to the Chinese is that ‘we support our allies like the Philippines on these disputed islands’.”
Jose Manuel Romualdez | Philippine Ambassador to US
Vice-President Kamala Harris will underscore America’s commitment to defending treaty ally the Philippines with a visit that was to start yesterday and involves flying to an island province facing the disputed South China Sea, where Washington has accused China of bullying smaller claimant nations.
After attending the AsiaPacific Economic Cooperation summit in Thailand, Harris was to fly last night to Manila and today meet President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. for talks aimed at reinforcing Washington’s oldest treaty alliance in Asia and strengthening economic ties, said a senior US administration official.
Tomorrow she’ll fly to Palawan province, which lies along the South China Sea, to meet fishermen, villagers, officials and the coast guard. Once there, she’ll be the highest-ranking US leader to visit the frontier island at the forefront of the long-seething territorial disputes involving China, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
Freedom of navigation
The Philippine coast guard is scheduled to welcome Harris on board one of its biggest patrol ships, the BRP Teresa Magbanua, in Palawan, where she is scheduled to deliver a speech, according to coast guard spokesperson Commodore Armand Balilo.
Harris will underscore the importance of international law, unimpeded commerce and freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, the US official said.
China can view the visit the way it wants, the official added in response to a question, but Washington’s message is that the US, as a member of the Indo-Pacific, is engaged and committed to the security of its allies in the region.
Philippine Ambassador to Washington Jose Manuel Romualdez said Harris’ trip to Palawan shows the level of America’s support to an ally and concern over China’s actions in the disputed sea.
“That’s as obvious as you can get, that the message they’re trying to impart to the Chinese is that ‘we support our allies like the Philippines on these disputed islands,’” Romualdez said. “This visit is a significant step in showing how serious the United States views this situation now.”
Washington and Beijing have long been on a collision course in the contested waters. While the US lays no claims to the strategic waterway, it has said that freedom of navigation and overflight in the South China Sea is in America’s national interest.
China opposes US Navy and Air Force patrols in the busy waterway, which Beijing claims virtually in its entirety. It has warned Washington not to meddle in what it says is a purely Asian territorial conflict — which has become a delicate front-line in the USChina rivalry in the region.