Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte
said he’s
considering buying weapons from Russia and China while also ending joint patrols with U.S. forces in the South China Sea.
In a televised speech Tuesday before military officers in Manila, Duterte said that two countries -- which he didn’t identify -- had agreed to give the Philippines a 25-year soft loan to buy military equipment. Later, he said that Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana and “technical people” in the armed forces would visit China and Russia “and see what’s best.”
On Tuesday, Duterte
said the Philippines needs propeller-driven planes that it can use against insurgents and fight terrorists in Mindanao. He
said he wanted to buy arms “where they are cheap and where there are no strings attached and it is transparent.”
“I don’t need jets, F-16 -- that’s of no use to us,” Duterte said. “We don’t intend to fight any country.”
Since 1950, the U.S. has accounted for about 75 percent of the Philippines’ arms imports, according to a database from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Russia and China haven’t supplied any weapons in that time, it showed.