Maritime security will be an important part of the discussion during the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-United States Leaders’ Summit to be held at Sunnylands, California this week and which President Aquino is scheduled to attend. Presidential Communications Operations Secretary Herminio Coloma, in a radio interview yesterday, said that based on the discussions during the United States-ASEAN (US-ASEAN) Summit in Kuala Lumpur last November, US President Barack Obama will probably initiate a dialogue with ASEAN leaders on matters concerning maritime security. “Maritime security has emerged as a vital concern to ASEAN,” he stressed. Coloma noted that the goal of achieving ASEAN economic integration through the ASEAN economic community, as well as the US initiative on establishing a Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) to promote free trade in the Asia Pacific region may be enhanced through more vigorous trades that, in turn, must be assured by freedom of navigation in the main [...]
