Press Release
February 23, 2006
US TROOPS IN MINDANAO SHOULD BE UTILIZED FOR PEACEFUL, NOT WARLIKE PURPOSES
Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Nene Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban)
today commended American troops for helping rescue hundreds of
victims trapped in the landslides in St. Bernard, Southern Leyte but
cautioned them against taking part in military operations against
Muslim terrorists and insurgents in Sulu and other parts of
Mindanao.
Speaking at the Kapihan sa Klub, Club Filipino at Greenhills, San
Juan, Pimentel said he has always held the view that if the
Americans want to maintain a presence in the country, it should be
for peaceful purposes, not for warlike intentions.
That is why I like the sight of GI Joes digging into the mud that
covered the whole village of Guinsaugon to save, rather than destroy
life. As the lone senator from Mindanao, that is what I would like
to see done by the Americans in Moroland; wage peace, not war, he
said.
Some 3,000 American soldiers were diverted from the joint RP-US
Balikatan military exercises in the South to help in the rescue and
relief operations in Southern Leyte.
He said any participation of American troops in combat operations
will be tantamount to foreign intervention in the internal problems
of a sovereign country.
Put it in the concrete, I do not want them to start or cause any
hostilities against our brethren in Moroland. Otherwise, the peace
negotiations the government is now having with the Moro rebels would
be jeopardized, he said.
Pimentel recalled that it was the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, a
natural disaster, that caused the American troops to abandon Clark
Air Base in Pampanga, to the chagrin of a handful of people who
benefited from their presence.
Today, he said it is another natural disaster, the landslide in
Barangay Guinsaugon, Southern Leyte that brought the American
soldiers to St. Bernard town to the cheer of the whole nation.
Now, they are seen not as precursors of strife but as bearers of
hope for the entrapped villagers and their grieving families,
Pimentel said.
While praising the American troops for extending much-needed help to
the landslide victims, Pimentel said he was not about to justify the
Visiting Forces Agreement between Manila and Washington, which he
opposed by voting against its ratification in 1999.
However, he said that realistically speaking the US today is the
only superpower in the world, and there is not much the Philippines
could do to prevent the US from interfering in the affairs of the
country.
If countries as powerful as Germany, Japan, indeed even the United
Kingdom could not prevent the basing of US strike forces in their
areas of responsibility or bar the US from dragging them into their
recent wars for example in Afghanistan and Iraq, we should realize
that it is to our best interest as a nation to work for the
channeling of the resources of his mighty nation to peaceful, rather
than warlike purposes, Pimentel said. |