Duterte restores key Philippines’ military agreement with US

Visiting Forces Agreement, which the Philippine president had planned to cancel, is a key part of the relationship between the two nations.

President Rodrigo Duterte has restored a pact governing the presence of US troops in the Philippines, the two countries’ defence secretaries announced on Friday, retracting a decision that had caused increasing concern among policymakers in Washington and Manila. The Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) provides rules for the rotation of thousands of US troops in and out of the Philippines for war drills and exercises. It has assumed additional importance as the United States and its allies contend with an increasingly assertive China, particularly in the disputed South China Sea. “Let me thank President Duterte for his decision to fully restore the visiting forces agreement,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said on Friday in a joint press briefing with his Philippine counterpart, Delfin Lorenza.