US, Australia to adopt protocol in advisories

TOKYO – The United States and Australian embassies have agreed to come up with a protocol on travel advisories to avoid putting a country in a bad light with the use of raw intelligence information for terror warnings, President Aquino announced here.

“As regards terrorism, before we left I was able to speak with the (national security adviser) who talked with the Australia and US embassies to set up a protocol so we won’t have a repeat of what happened the last time around,” Mr. Aquino said at a brief press conference here upon his arrival from Manila on Thursday night.

The President had earlier chided the foreign countries that issued travel advisories against the Philippines for not coordinating with the government. He said the warnings were issued based on information that there were dignitaries who would be assassinated and that a terror attack was imminent in Metro Manila and other parts of the country.

He said as an ally, these foreign countries should actively engage the Philippines in dealing with various intelligence information as travel warnings could hurt the country’s image before the international community.

Mr. Aquino said the warnings came at a time when the Philippines was seeking more investments and tourists to generate jobs.

He also said that the US had been sending communications only about the benefits of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) between America and the Philippines as his administration was bent on reviewing the accord so it would not be “lopsided.”

The President said he was hoping to get official communication on the terror threats and not just on the VFA. He pressed for more accurate basis before travel advisories were issued against the country.

Aside from the US and Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and France had issued travel warnings against the Philippines.

No VFA talks

President Aquino added that he and former US President Bill Clinton did not talk about the VFA but did share a lot of insights, including experiences with the media.

“I don’t think we discussed VFA. The first thing we discussed was our experiences with media. He was saying that (he was trying to observe) how long they would pay attention while he was talking. One of the funniest things he said (was that) he would normally start the speech with a joke but unfortunately these days they seem to concentrate on the joke rather than the substance of what he came to speak of. So there were a lot of similarities with his experience and ours,” Mr. Aquino told reporters in a short press conference upon arrival here from Manila on Thursday night.

But Mr. Aquino’s love life and not only his jokes and light comments have been in the news.

As he arrived here, reports about him courting his stylist Liz Uy were played up by media.

Clinton, for his part, had a sex scandal when he was president as he admitted having an affair with a White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. Clinton is the husband of Hillary, the current US secretary of state.

The President said he discussed a number of topics with Clinton, including how the US fought crime and corruption.

“There was talk also of population and its effect on growth or the lack of growth. One of the points that really stuck was women who have access to higher education by default promote a more manageable population growth rate by staying in school and having opportunity after school, so that seems to be the findings everywhere. He was asking us also about our rice sufficiency. It was quite a long meeting but very interesting,” Mr. Aquino said.