US presence ‘needed against China’

The presence of American forces in the country will help deter foreign aggressors while the Philippines builds up its military, Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said on Friday.

In explaining the need to allow American access to its two former military bases in Subic and Clark, Gazmin pointed to the country’s  teritorial dispute with China, which he said is using its military might in claiming a number of islets and shoals in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea) that clearly belong to the Philippines under the United Nations Convention on the Rules of the Sea (UNCLOS).