Esperon bats for multilateral Balikatan military exercises

CLARK FREEPORT, Pampanga – Armed Forces chief of staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr. urged here yesterday the transformation of military exercises from being bilateral involving only the United States, to being “multilateral” involving more foreign countries to be covered by visiting forces agreement (VFA).

“I hope our Balikatan exercises will evolve from bilateral to multilateral exercises,” Esperon, who is co-chairman of the US-RP mutual defense board, said in his speech during the closing of the 24th Balikatan joint US-RP military exercises which, he noted, also evolved from being a “confidence building mechanism to strengthening RP-US alliance and pulling our two people closer to each other.”

This year’s Balitakan exercises was hailed by the US Embassy as “the most successful one to date.”

Signing VFA with other countries will pave the way for multilateral exercises, Esperon said, even as he noted that this year’s joint exercises had the most number of foreign observers from Australia, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand.

In an interview with The STAR after his speech, Esperon said that among members of the United Nations, “it is better to do things all together and we talk not only about the security of the Philippines but the security of the region itself.”

He noted that already, the Philippine government has been holding joint military exercises with other countries such as the Cobra Gold exercises slated with the Thai military.