By Mikhail Flores
MANILA (Reuters) -The Philippines and Australia are working towards a new defence agreement to be signed next year, their defence ministers said on Friday, as both nations seek to step up military cooperation to deal with shared security challenges in the Indo-Pacific.
Philippine Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said the enhanced defence cooperation pact will pave the way for more frequent joint military drills aimed at boosting combined operational capability and strengthening regional deterrence.
Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles, who is in Manila for a ministerial meeting, said the agreement would also support the development of defence infrastructure in the Philippines, with projects planned at five locations. He did not provide details.
Security engagements between the two allies have deepened as they look to counter what they have described as China’s increasingly aggressive activities in the South China Sea.
Ahead of Marles’ visit, the Philippine military reported an increase in the presence of Chinese vessels around the disputed Second Thomas Shoal, coinciding with ongoing joint drills between Canberra and Manila.
The 15-day exercise called ALON, a Filipino word for ‘wave’, began on August 15 and included a joint sail between the navies of the Philippines, Australia and Canada in the South China Sea, an area of flaring tensions following a collision between two Chinese vessels last week.
China’s actions in the South China Sea “are a matter not only of concern but of condemnation,” Teodoro said at a joint press conference with Marles, adding that they have widened China’s “trust deficit”.
He said that while the Philippines could not control China’s unilateral activities in the region, there was a need to build deterrence.
The Chinese Embassy in Manila did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
China claims the South China Sea, a conduit for more than $3 trillion in annual shipborne commerce, almost entirely as its own.
In 2016 the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague said China’s claims had no legal basis, siding with the Philippines, which brought the case.
But China rejects the ruling, leading to a series of sea and air confrontations with the Philippines in the strategic waterway.
(Writing by Karen Lema; Editing by John Mair and David Stanway)
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