US port calls in Philippines to continue - Gazmin

MANILA, Philippines - Port visits of US vessels to the Philippines would continue despite the grounding of a warship in Tubbataha Reef, the Defense department said Monday.

“This (port call) is part of our relationship with the international [community],” Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said when asked whether the port calls would go on despite the Tubbataha incident.

“If a request for port call is filed, as long as there is nothing unusual with the port call, we do accept port calls,” Gazmin added.

Gazmin said the subsequent port visits of foreign ships have nothing to do with the grounding of the USS Guardian, which has caused damage to the reef’s coral network.

When asked what can be done to prevent similar incidents, Gazmin said: “That is a very hard question to answer. As you very well know, the captain (attributed the incident to) faulty chart. How do we address that?”

The military earlier said the grounding of the USS Guardian would not disrupt the subsequent exercises between the US and the Philippine armed forces.

“This [incident] won’t affect the conduct of our exercises,” Armed Forces spokesman Col. Arnulfo Burgos Jr. said. “Nobody wanted that incident to happen."

Burgos said the military is already planning for the next Balikatan exercises between US and Filipino troops to be held this year.

Balikatan literally means shoulder to shoulder and is an annual exercise designed to improve the interoperability between US and Philippine troops.

On January 17, USS Guardian ran aground at the Tubbataha Reef’s south atoll off Palawan, triggering calls for the US to rehabilitate the area.

The 1,300-ton, 68-meter-long warship had just completed a port call in Subic Bay and was en route to Indonesia when the grounding occurred.

Known for its extensive coral network, the Tubbataha Reef in Sulu Sea is one of only five Philippine sites declared as Word Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.

The other World Heritage Sites in the country are cultural houses in the town of Vigan in Ilocos Sur, the Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park in Palawan, the Rice Terraces in the Cordilleras, and a grouping of baroque churches – San Agustin in Manila, Miag-ao in Iloilo, Paoay in Ilocos Norte and Santa Maria in Ilocos Sur.

Tubbataha, which spans 130,028 hectares, was declared a protected area, which means that swimming or diving in the area requires special permits from the government.

The environmental threat posed by the grounding of the ship has prompted militant groups to call for the scrapping of the Mutual Defense Treaty.

US ships have been conducting frequent “routine port calls” in Philippine waters after US bared plans to deploy majority of its naval fleet to the Pacific by 2020.

The move is in line with the US’s efforts to boost its presence in the Asia Pacific.