The United States must declare all assets it will bring inside the sites under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), the spokesperson of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) says.
During a public briefing, Armed Forces Spokesperson Colonel Medel Aguilar said that the Philippine government would still be the owner of EDCA sites as well as all related properties and facilities.
The Philippine government earlier this month identified the additional four EDCA sites located in Cagayan, Isabela, and Palawan.House Deputy Minority Leader and ACT Teachers Party-list Rep. France Castro said President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. may either not have accurately known the country’s EDCA with the United States or was not telling the truth when he assured Filipinos that sites under the deal would not be used to launch attacks.
The critics of the military deal pointed to a line in the agreement which states, “United States forces shall have control over the access to and disposition of such prepositioned materiel and shall have the unencumbered right to remove such prepositioned materiel at any time from the territory of the Philippines.”
[Translation: The only role of Filipino soldiers there is to act as guards who cannot even enter or check what is happening inside.]
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