MANILA, Philippines – The Philippines will reopen its embassy in Iraq before end of this year if the US intelligence report saying that the situation there continues to improve will not change, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said yesterday.
Assistant Secretary Jesus Yabes of the DFA Office of Middle East and African Affairs (OMEAA) said the department makes an assessment of the situation in Iraq on a monthly basis and considers the latest assessment of a US policy working group on the improvement in the country.
“As we all know, there is a US policy working group that said the situation in Iraq is improving. If this will continue, we will reopen our embassy there,” Yabes said during the Iraq Symposium, adding that this may happen by the end of the year.
The Philippines still has an embassy in Baghdad but the diplomatic post had to temporarily go to a satellite office in Amman, Jordan in 2005 because of violence and security threats to diplomats and embassy personnel.
According to Yabes, Kuwait’s embassy in Baghdad was already permitted to reopen.
Aside from Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Saudi Arabia also committed to reopen their diplomatic missions in Baghdad.
“The violence you read about is in other areas of the country; like the violence in Southern Philippines, same thing with Iraq. It’s not all in Baghdad. And the new government of Iraq is showing teeth in dealing with militias in the country,” he said.
Yabes also said that the lifting of the travel ban to Iraq may follow the reopening of the embassy in Baghdad.
Charge d’Affaires Falih Al-Assadi of the Iraqi Embassy in Manila said he hopes that the Philippine government will lift the travel ban to Iraq which was implemented following the abduction of Filipino truck driver Angelo de la Cruz in 2004. De la cruz was subsequently released after the alleged payment of ransom and the pullout of the small Philippine contingent sent there as part of the US-led “coalition of the willing.”
Meantime, the DFA said most transactions to recruit overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to Iraq are done on the Internet, which makes it very difficult for government agencies to monitor.