(Eagle News)–President Rodrigo Duterte is slated to meet US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Thursday, Feb. 28.
Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. is also slated to meet with Pompeo, who will also be in the country on March 1, Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said.
This is Pompeo’s first visit to the country since he assumed office.
According to Panelo, “any subject matter that is mutually beneficial to both countries will be discussed or any matter for the Secretary to raise” during Duterte’s and Pompeo’s meeting at the Villamor Airbase in Pasay.
He said this may include the Mutual Defense Treaty, which Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana has sought to amend to supposedly make it relevant to the South China Sea dispute between China and the Philippines.
Lorenzana had cited a provision in the MDT which said that the US would come to the aid of “metropolitan Philippines” should it be attacked.
“If they said that they are going to defend us or help us if metropolitan Philippines is attacked, what do they mean by metropolitan Philippines? Does it include Scarborough Shoal, Mischief Reef or Pag-asa,” Lorenzana had said.
Pompeo was also among three US Cabinet secretaries who Duterte said wrote to him apparently to offer US weapons for the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
Apart from Pompeo, Duterte said in a speech in August last year that then-Defense Secretary James Mattis and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross wrote him to say that US weapons and other defense equipment were beneficial to both their countries.
Duterte, however, seemed not so keen on the offer, and said he would no longer accept second-hand weapons from the United States.
The Philippines had also scrapped a deal to buy assault rifles from the US after some US legislators sought to block the sale to Manila, citing what they said were their concerns over Duterte’s drug war.
