MANILA: Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang was due to arrive in Manila Friday to try to boost ties with the Philippines, which is staging its largest-ever military exercises with the United States.
Philippine officials said Qin is set to meet President Ferdinand Marcos on Saturday after an initial meeting with his Philippine counterpart Enrique Manalo.
Qin’s visit coincides with the Philippines and the United States holding their largest joint military exercises, with nearly 18,000 troops taking part in live-fire and combat drills until April 28.
Marcos has sought to strengthen ties with Washington after his predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte, trashed the alliance and shifted toward Beijing for economic deals and infrastructure projects.
This was despite conflicting territorial claims between China and the Philippines in the strategic South China Sea.
“Regional security issues of mutual concern” will be part of the discussions, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said in a statement. Strengthening cooperation in agriculture, trade, energy and infrastructure is also on the agenda.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on Friday Qin’s visit is aimed at “enhancing mutual trust” and “properly handling differences” with the Philippines.
“China looks forward to strengthening communication with the Philippines through this visit,” Wang told a regular briefing.
Overlapping claims in the South China Sea have been a sticking point in the relations between the two countries.
Beijing claims almost the entire waterway, deploying hundreds of vessels there to patrol the waters and occupy reefs.
It has also ignored a 2016 international tribunal ruling that its claims have no legal basis.
Qin will be marking his first visit to the Philippines as foreign minister.
His predecessor, Wang Yi, was the first foreign minister to visit Marcos last year, describing his election in June as “turning a new page” that would create a “new golden age of bilateral relations” between the two countries.
Since then, however, Marcos has gravitated closer to the United States.
The Philippine leader will meet US President Joe Biden next month to discuss efforts to strengthen the longstanding alliance between the treaty allies.
Manila and Washington agreed in recent months to restart joint maritime patrols on the South China Sea and agreed to expand US forces’ presence in the country.
Marcos has also allowed the United States to rotate its troops around four additional sites under a 2014 deal that originally identified five locations.
The new bases include a naval base and airport in northern provinces near Taiwan and an air base off an island near the South China Sea.
While the Philippine military is one of the weakest in Asia, the country’s proximity to Taiwan and its surrounding waters would make it a key partner for the United States in the event of a conflict with China.
The DFA said Qin’s visit will also build on Marcos’ visit to Beijing in January, when he and Chinese president Xi Jinping agreed on a “friendly” handling of disputes.
Weeks after Marcos’s visit, Manila accused a Chinese vessel of using a military-grade laser light against a Philippine patrol boat.
The DFA had said it filed more than 70 protests against China’s “persistent and illegal presence in Philippine water” since Marcos assumed the presidency last year.
Chinese FM to visit Manila during Philippines-US war games
https://arab.news/vs8x3
Chinese FM to visit Manila during Philippines-US war games
- Overlapping claims in the South China Sea have been a sticking point in the relations between the two countries
Trump urges Iranian Kurds to attack Iran as war widens
- Azerbaijan preparing unspecified retaliatory measures on Thursday
- The seven-day war has now seen Iran target Israel, the Gulf states, Cyprus, Turkiye and Azerbaijan, and spread to the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka
DUBAI/WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump encouraged Iranian Kurdish forces in Iraq to launch attacks against Iran as the Middle East conflict widened, with Azerbaijan warning it would retaliate for being targeted by Iranian missiles.
Israel on Friday said it had started a “broad-scale” wave of attacks against infrastructure targets in Tehran, as Gulf cities came under renewed bombardment by Iran.
The seven-day war has now seen Iran target Israel, the Gulf states, Cyprus, Turkiye and Azerbaijan, and spread to the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka where a US submarine sank an Iranian naval ship.
On the possibility of the Iranian Kurdish forces entering Iran, Trump told Reuters on Thursday: “I think it’s wonderful that they want to do that, I’d be all for it.”
Two Iranian drone attacks targeted an Iranian opposition camp in Iraqi Kurdistan on Thursday, security sources said.
Iranian Kurdish militias have consulted with the United States in recent days about whether, and how, to attack Iran’s security forces in the western part of the country, according to three sources with knowledge of the matter.
The Iranian Kurdish coalition of groups based on the Iran-Iraq border in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan has been training to mount such an attack in hopes of weakening the country’s military, as the United States and Israel pound Iranian targets with bombs and missiles. Trump, speaking with Reuters in a telephone interview, also said the United States must have a role in deciding who will be the next leader of Iran after airstrikes killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei last week.
“We’re going to have to choose that person along with Iran. We’re going to have to choose that person,” he said.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Thursday that the US was not expanding its military objectives in Iran, despite what Trump said about choosing the country’s next leader.
“There’s no expansion in our objectives. We know exactly what we’re trying to achieve,” he said. The attack on Iran is a major political gamble for the Republican president, with opinion polls showing little support and Americans concerned about the rise in gasoline prices caused by disruption to energy supplies. Trump dismissed that concern. Shares on Wall Street fell on Thursday, weighed by surging oil prices, as the economic impact of the campaign intensified, with countries around the world cut off from a fifth of global supplies of oil and liquefied natural gas and air transport still facing chaos and global logistics increasingly snarled.
Azerbaijan prepares to retaliate
Azerbaijan was preparing unspecified retaliatory measures on Thursday after it said four Iranian drones crossed its border and injured four people in the Nakhchivan exclave.
“We will not tolerate this unprovoked act of terror and aggression against Azerbaijan,” President Ilham Aliyev told a meeting of his Security Council.
Iran, which has a significant Azeri minority, denied it targeted its neighbor.
Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militia warned Israeli residents to evacuate towns within 5 km (3 miles) of the border between the countries in a message posted on its Telegram channel in Hebrew early on Friday.
“Your military’s aggression against Lebanese sovereignty and safe citizens, the destruction of civilian infrastructure and the expulsion campaign it is carrying out will not go unchallenged,” Hezbollah said.
Us munitions full
Hegseth and Admiral Brad Cooper, who leads US forces in the Middle East, said during a briefing about operations that the US has enough munitions to continue its bombardment indefinitely.
“Iran is hoping that we cannot sustain this, which is a really bad miscalculation,” Hegseth told reporters at Central Command headquarters in Florida. “Our munitions are full up and our will is ironclad.”
The Pentagon earlier this week said the military campaign, known as Operation Epic Fury, is focused on destroying Iran’s offensive missiles, missile production and navy, while not allowing Tehran to have a nuclear weapon.
Cooper said the US had now hit at least 30 Iranian ships, including a large drone carrier that he said was the size of a World War Two aircraft carrier.
He added that B-2 bombers had in the past few hours dropped dozens of 2,000 penetrator bombs targeting deeply buried ballistic missile launchers, and that bombings were also targeting Iran’s missile production facilities.
Iran’s ballistic missile attacks had decreased by 90 percent since the first day of the war, while drone attacks had decreased by 83 percent in that time frame, he said. In Iran, at least 1,230 people have been killed, according to the Iranian Red Crescent Society, including 175 schoolgirls and staff killed at a primary school in Minab in the country’s south on the first day of the war. Another 77 have been killed in Lebanon, its Health Ministry says. Thousands fled southern Beirut on Thursday after Israel warned residents to leave.
