INTERVIEW-U.S. scales down annual Philippine war games
Source: Reuters
By Raju Gopalakrishnan MANILA, Feb 2 (Reuters) - The United States is drastically scaling down annual war games with the Philippine military this year, partly because a row over a U.S. marine convicted of rape disrupted preparations, the ambassador in Manila said on Friday. About 400 U.S. troops will be participating in the annual "Balikatan" (shoulder-to-shoulder) joint military exercises which start on Feb. 18, compared to about 5,500 last year. The United States cancelled this year's exercises after a row in December over the custody of a marine convicted of rape, but reinstated them a few days after the marine was taken from a Manila jail and put in custody in the embassy premises. "The hiatus does have an impact," Ambassador Kristie Kenney said in an interview with Reuters. "There are some things that the planners had been thinking about, but the hiatus made it too difficult to put some of that back." The Philippines was a U.S. colony for most of the first half of the 20th century and is now one of its foremost allies in Asia, despite asking Washington to vacate military bases in the country in the early 1990s. Since 2002, U.S. special forces troops have been helping the Philippine military combat Islamic militants in the south of the country as part of the war on terrorism. Balikatan has been the showpiece of the ties between the two militaries for years, but Kenney said that was changing. "Balikatan was once the one big event, and that's not the case now. We have so many (exercises) going on throughout the year." She said also the focus of Balikatan was shifting from training exercises to humanitarian operations, similar to projects undertaken by the special forces on the southern island of Jolo, a bastion of the rebel Abu Sayyaf group where the troops have been building roads and schools. Much of this year's Balikatan exercises will be on Jolo and in nearby areas on the Mindanao mainland where Islamic rebels have been fighting the Manila government for decades. Most of the country's 87 million people are Catholic. Armed with U.S.-provided intelligence, Philippine troops on the Jolo have scored a series of successes against the Abu Sayyaf in recent months, including killing at least two of its top four leaders. And local residents have said the development projects launched by U.S. officials have done a lot to revive the local economy. "The president of the Philippines is a very strong proponent of the counter-terrorism package and the fact that you also have to defeat poverty at the same time," Kenney said. "That dovetails very nicely with the views of the government of the United States." The U.S. troops are heavily armed but are not permitted to use their weapons unless fired upon, according to the terms of their deployment. In almost five years in the southern Philippines, just one U.S. soldier has been killed, a sergeant who was killed by a bomb in a market. "We have a vast shared history that's gone all sorts of ways, but we have reached a stage today where it's a very mature relationship," Kenney said. "We don't have bases here any more because the Philippine troops are a fine fighting force. On the economic front, it is the Philippines who are setting the direction and we're being helpful. We are very much partners."
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