Philippine leader says no promise made to China to remove grounded
warship
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[August 09, 2023]
By Karen Lema and Neil Jerome Morales
MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr on Wednesday
denied making an agreement with China to remove a grounded warship that
serves as a military outpost in South China Sea, and said if there ever
were such a deal, it should be considered rescinded.
The Philippines maintains a handful of troops aboard the World War
Two-era Sierra Madre at the Second Thomas Shoal, known by Manila as
Ayungin shoal, which is located inside its 200-mile exclusive economic
zone (EEZ).
China on Monday accused the Philippines of reneging on a promise made
"explicitly" to remove the ship, which was grounded in 1999 to bolster
its territorial claims in one of the world's most contested areas.
"I'm not aware of any such arrangement or agreement that the Philippines
will remove from its own territory its ship," Marcos said in a video
statement.
"And let me go further, if there does exist such an agreement, I rescind
that agreement now".
Jonathan Malaya, National Security Council assistant director general,
earlier challenged China to produce evidence of the promise.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Aug/09/images/ads/current/elkhart_fertilizer_sda_FAIR_2023.png)
"For all intents and purposes, it is a figment of their imagination," he
said.
China's embassy in Manila said it had no comment.
China and the Philippines have been embroiled for years in on-off
confrontations at the shoal, the latest on Saturday. The Philippines
accused China's coast guard of using water cannon to impede a resupply
mission to the Sierra Madre.
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![](../images/080923PIX/news_z34.jpg)
A Chinese Coast Guard ship launches what
the Coast Guard says is a warning water cannon spray in the
direction of a Philippine vessel at an unknown location at sea in
this screen grab taken from a video released on August 8, 2023.
China Coast Guard/Handout via REUTERS
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2023/Aug/09/images/ads/current/graue_quarter_FAIR_2023.png)
The Philippines was "committed to maintain" the rusty ship on the
shoal, Malaya said, adding it was "our symbol of sovereignty in a
shoal located in our EEZ".
An EEZ gives a country sovereign rights to fisheries and natural
resources within 200 miles of its coast, but it does not denote
sovereignty over that area.
The Philippines won an international arbitration award against China
in 2016, after a tribunal said Beijing's sweeping claim to
sovereignty over most of the South China Sea had no legal basis,
including at the Second Thomas Shoal.
China has built militarised, manmade islands in the South China Sea
and its claim of historic sovereignty overlaps with the EEZs of the
Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia.
Jay Batongbacal, a maritime expert at the University of the
Philippines, said control of the Second Thomas Shoal was not only
strategic for China but it could be "another ideal place to build a
military base."
(Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales and Karen Lema; Editing by Martin
Petty)
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