MANILA - The US and Philippine militaries are scheduled to hold joint amphibious landing exercises in the Philippines next week amidst recent diplomatic spat between the two treaty allies, a spokesman for the Philippine armed forces said on Thursday.
Capt. Ryan Lacuesta of the Philippine Marines said the amphibious landing exercises will open on Oct 4 at the Philippine Marines headquarters in Fort Bonifacio in the Philippine capital.
The US Embassy in Manila has yet to issue an official statement on the scheduled landing exercises next week.
US President Barack Obama has called off a bilateral meeting with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meetings in Laos early this month, following Duterte's tirade against Obama after the latter criticized Duterte's violent war against drugs in the Philippines.
In a speech at the inauguration of a power plant in Misamis Oriental in southern Philippines on Thursday, Duterte reiterated that he would not allow Philippine military to participate in joint patrols in the South China Sea.
Earlier this month, Duterte also said he wanted the more than 100 US Special Forces posted in Mindanao out.
"(Those special forces), they have to go. They have to go," he said during a speech at the Malacanang presidential palace in Manila.
In the same event, Duterte again showed pictures of US operations in Mindanao at the start of the 20th century in which US troops subjugated Moro rebels. He went around using the pictures sourced from the "US archive."
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