Inihayag ni Pangulong Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. ang posibilidad na ma-‘reset’ o magsimula ulit ang relasyon sa pagitan ng Pilipinas at China dahil sa krisis na dala ng kaguluhan sa Middle East.
“I think it’s certainly going to happen… It’s happening now,” the President said when asked if a “reset” of ties with China is possible, ani Marcos sa interview sa Bloomberg, kung saan sinabi rin nito na bukas din ang Pilipinas para sa ‘joint oil and gas talks’ sa South China Sea.
“There’s going to be a very, very serious restructuring. I remember I was watching Prime Minister Wong from Singapore and he was saying there will be, we will have to withdraw, redraw, all of our, even our legal relationships in terms of international law, in terms of all of these things.They will have a lasting effect, and there is, there will have to be a new normal,” dagdag pa ng Pangulo.
Hindi rin umano imposible na pumasok sa isang partnership ang bansa sa China upang makapag-develop ng gas resources sa pinagtatalunang teritoryo.
“That’s something that we’ve been talking about for a great deal. But the territorial disputes will get in the way of that. Maybe this will be—provides impetus for both sides to come to an agreement,” ani Marcos.
“We’ve always tried to differentiate the territorial disputes from our trade arrangements. And many, many investments.. still, of the big programs here of the government are coming from China… and they have not used this as somehow, they haven’t leveraged this in any way. In quite the contrary, they’ve been very, very helpful in terms of, for example, fertilizer, which is, we import a great deal of fertilizer from China,” dagdag niya.
Ukol naman sa posisyon ng bansa sa Middle East crisis, inihayag ng Pangulo na: “Our foreign policy is very, very simple. It’s peace and the national interest. That’s it. And war is never in the national interest as far as the Philippines is concerned. And so we just are hoping that this ends soon and that whatever recalibration will be done as quickly as possible so we can get back to work.”
