By Todd Crowell
TOKYO
In a move sure to irritate Beijing and increase tensions in the South China Sea, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III has proposed granting Japan similar basing rights in his country to that already enjoyed with the United States.
Aquino welcomed the development at a press conference in Tokyo Friday.
"We will be initiating all the diplomatic requirements to come up with a Visiting Forces Agreement," he added, according to Kyodo news agency.
The surprise announcement came at the end of a four-day trip to Japan dominated by events in the South China Sea, and highlighted the rapidly increasing military partnership with Japan.
It included Japan’s promise to build ten new coast guard vessels for the Philippines and to make other transfers.
The move would provide refueling and maintenance services to Japanese military aircraft patrolling the South China Sea, which assumes that Japan will actually begin such patrols.
Tokyo has no territorial claims in that region but does have an interest in maintaining free navigation of the waters.
The U.S. Navy has already begun patrolling the Spratly islands, which are claimed by China and five other nations, with P-8 patrol aircraft and light frigate ships called Littoral Combat Ships.
In January Vice Admiral Robert Thomas, commander of the 7th Fleet based in Japan, said he would welcome the idea of Japanese patrols.
Manila expelled U.S. navy and air forces from their bases in the Philippines in 1991, but has been quietly inviting U.S. forces back on a rotational basis, first to help counter an insurgency in its south and now to address China’s assertiveness.
In any potential conflict, Manila has two important assets: it has a mutual defense treaty with the U.S, and it is strategically located next to disputed Spratly islands.
Now it may have a third asset in a closer, quasi alliance with Japan.
The two countries have improved defense ties amid China's continued large-scale reclamation activities in the disputed islets and reefs in the South China Sea.
In separate speeches during his visit, Aquino criticized China's assertiveness and what he called its "unlawful territorial claim."
