{"id":51355,"date":"2015-06-06T00:43:53","date_gmt":"2015-06-05T16:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=51355"},"modified":"2015-06-06T00:43:53","modified_gmt":"2015-06-05T16:43:53","slug":"ph-japan-to-craft-vfa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/06\/06\/ph-japan-to-craft-vfa\/","title":{"rendered":"PH, Japan to craft VFA"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"President<\/a>
President Aquino addresses the Joint Session of the National Diet of Japan at the Chamber of the House of Councillors (HoC) in Tokyo. (Malaca\u00f1ang Photo Bureau)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

During President Benigno Aquino III\u2019s four-day state visit in Japan, one of his agendas was to enhance the strategic partnership of the Philippines and Japan.<\/p>\n

This included crafting a Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), which is an agreement between a country and a foreign country having military forces visiting the said country.<\/p>\n

Aquino met with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and discussed the possibility of a military agreement.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Philippines does welcome this development and we will be initiating all the diplomatic requirements to come up with a Visiting Forces Agreement,\u201d Aquino said in a press conference.<\/p>\n

The Senate, however, still needs to approve such VFA.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Visiting Forces Agreement will have to be passed and approved by our Senate, but we will be starting discussions on all of the details embodied in this,\u201d Aquino said.<\/p>\n

At present, only the United States of America and Australia have a VFA with the Philippines, whose troops regularly visit the country. With Japan being one of the Philippines\u2019 strategic partners, Aquino believed that a VFA with it is also needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt does not behoove a good partnership if you’re not able to work at interoperability with the other,\u201d Aquino said. \u201cAn agreement even for humanitarian concerns that exists only in paper will not be effective when there comes the time that you would need to be in coordination and in corporation or in joint operation with your strategic partner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aquino and Abe had already signed a Joint Declaration on the Strengthened Strategic Partnership between the Philippines and Japan, focusing on defense, security cooperation, economic assistance and disaster relief operations.<\/p>\n

Included in the two countries\u2019 partnership is Japan\u2019s export of a P-3C anti-submarine reconnaissance aircraft and radar technology to the Philippines and defense talks, supply of 10 patrol vessels to the Philippine coast guard, and joint exercises in the military.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need maritime domain awareness. We have a 36,000-kilometer coastline. We want to know what\u2019s happening in our waters,\u201d Aquino said.<\/p>\n

The Philippines, for its part, will grant Japan\u2019s Self-Defense Forces access to the country\u2019s military bases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During President Benigno Aquino III\u2019s four-day state visit in Japan, one of his agendas was to enhance the strategic partnership …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":51210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,95,483],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51355","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headline","category-news-ph","category-politics","mauthors-cyra-moraleda","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}