Blinken to meet Marcos in Manila to 'strengthen alliance'
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WASHINGTON • US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will travel next week to the Philippines to meet new President Ferdinand Marcos Jr, with Washington expecting a close alliance despite rights concerns.
Mr Blinken will meet Mr Marcos in Manila next Saturday as part of efforts "to strengthen the US-Philippines alliance" including on energy and trade, the State Department said in a statement.
They will also discuss "our shared democratic values", the statement said yesterday.
Mr Blinken will head to the Philippines after attending a series of meetings in Cambodia.
He will be in Phnom Penh from Wednesday to Friday to participate in the US-Asean Ministerial Meeting, the East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers' Meeting and the Asean Regional Forum.
"At each ministerial (meeting), the Secretary will emphasise the United States' commitment to Asean centrality and successful implementation of the Asean Outlook on the Indo-Pacific," said the statement.
"He will also address the Covid-19 pandemic, economic cooperation, the fight against climate change, the crisis in Burma (Myanmar) and Russia's war in Ukraine."
From Manila, the top US envoy will visit South Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda, the statement said.
Mr Marcos - the son of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos - quickly received a congratulatory call from US President Joe Biden after he won the May elections.
The US has a treaty alliance with the Philippines and has backed its former colony in increasingly heated disputes in the South China Sea with Beijing.
US relations with Manila rebounded towards the end of the tenure of Mr Marcos' predecessor Rodrigo Duterte, who waged a brutal war on drugs that rights groups say left tens of thousands of people dead.
Mr Marcos Sr and his wife Imelda were notorious for their graft and high-flying lifestyle in a country marked by rampant poverty.
The US supported the elder Marcos for two decades but nudged him into going into exile in Hawaii in 1986 in the face of mass protests.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE