Photographer: Ted Aljibe / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Ted Aljibe / AFP / Getty Images
The Philippines has said that the US President Joe Biden’s government has promised that the United States will help the Southeast Asian country if there is an armed attack in the South China Sea, promise made by former President Donald Trump’s government.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Philippine Secretary of State Teodoro Locsin in a call that the 1951 to 1951 treaty between the two countries “would apply to armed attacks against the Philippines” , said Manila’s envoy in Washington, Jose Manuel Romualdez, at a virtual forum organized by the Foreign Correspondents Association.
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The U.S. State Department, in a separate statement Wednesday said Blinken spoke to Locsin about the application of the treaty “to armed attacks on the Philippine army, public vessels or aircraft in the Pacific, which include the South China Sea.”
The reassurance comes amid Beijing’s persistent allegations of its South China Sea claims overlapping with those of Manila and other countries in the region. China recently enacts a law that gives its coastguard more freedom to shoot at foreign vessels, a move that could increase the risk of miscalculation in controversial waters and that the Philippines argument.