US to help coast guards in Pacific protect exclusive economic zones

The United States Coast Guard will continue to help Indo-Pacific countries which are having difficulties protecting their exclusive economic zones such as the Philippines, its commander in the region said on Tuesday.

"We are very much interested in engaging with partner nations and using our authorities and capacity-building in a way that is helpful and beneficial to particularly some of the small island nations who struggle with their own EEZ [Exclusive Economic Zone] enforcement," Vice Admiral Linda Fagan said in a telephonic briefing.

"We’ll do things like send a small training team into a nation and help teach them how to do a fisheries enforcement boarding to guard against fishing incursions," she added.

Fagan said that these efforts were anchored on the goal of strengthening US partners' capabilities in protecting their "own sovereignty."

The Philippines is one of the claimants to territories in the resource-rich South China Sea.

Malacañang on Tuesday expressed concern over the presence of a Chinese warship near Scarborough Shoal, as reported by the Philippine Coast Guard.

The US Coast Guard in May conducted drills with its Filipino counterpart near the Scarborough Shoal—claimed by China but clearly within the Philippines' exclusive economic zone.

The Philippine Navy said that the exercises were not meant to agitate China because they were held in international waters.

Chinese ships, however, were supposedly seen lurking around the area during the drills.

Fagan said that the deployment of US Coast Guard personnel in the region was mainly for multilateral engagements with partner countries in the region.

"The Coast Guard role is, again I’d emphasize, the free and open Indo-[Pacific] and a rules-based international system. The ship deployment is consistent with that," Fagan said.

"We have operated in the Western Pacific before. This is, for us, just a return to engagement in an area that we have been, and conducted operations in before and consistent with agreed international law," she added.

The US Coast Guard's maritime security cutter Bertholf, which was deployed in the Western Pacific region in January, will return to California in a couple of days.

It will be replaced by cutter Stratton to continue mutual engagements with partners in the region, according to Fagan. —Dona Magsino/NB, GMA News