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Philippine, US warships to hold drills near China-claimed waters
 by Staff Writers
 Manila (AFP) June 20, 2014


Taiwan threatens to call off Japan art loan in poster row
Taipei (AFP) June 20, 2014 - Taiwan threatened Friday to terminate a loan of treasured artefacts to Japan after the name of its national museum was changed in promotional posters in a row highlighting the island's sensitivity over its global diplomatic status.

Taiwan protested as a matter of "national dignity" and demanded corrections after some of the Tokyo posters referred to the "Taipei Palace Museum" rather than the "National Palace Museum" which owns the artefacts.

The name issue has long been a sensitive topic for Taiwan which is recognised by only 22 countries in a decades-old diplomatic tug-of-war with China from which it split in 1949.

"National dignity definitely comes before cultural exchanges. The government and the public will not accept if a cultural exchange hurts our national dignity," presidential spokeswoman Ma Wei-kuo said in a statement.

Japan, like most countries, has diplomatic ties with Beijing rather than Taipei, but maintains close trade and civil ties with Taiwan, which was its colony from 1895 to 1945.

Taiwan's first lady Chow Mei-ching was scheduled to attend the opening of the show next week at the Tokyo National Museum but she would cancel the trip if Taipei's demand was not met, officials said.

The National Palace Museum announced last year the loan of 231 artefacts to Japan, its first to an Asian country, following exhibitions in the United States, France, Germany and Austria.

The Taipei museum boasts more than 600,000 artefacts spanning 7,000 years of Chinese history from the prehistoric Neolithic period to the end of the Qing Dynasty that were mostly removed from Beijing's Forbidden City.

The museum's contents -- one of the world's finest collections of Chinese treasures -- were brought to the island by Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek, when he fled to Taiwan after losing the Chinese civil war to the communists in 1949.

For years the National Palace Museum was unwilling to lend the artefacts to Japan for fears that China would try to reclaim them, until the Japanese government passed a law in 2011 to prevent such seizures.

China regards Taiwan as part of its territory awaiting reunification, by force if necessary, although tensions have eased markedly since Taiwan's Beijing-friendly President Ma Ying-jeou took office in 2008.

Philippine and US warships are set to kick off joint drills near disputed South China Sea waters next week, a Filipino military spokesman said Friday, amid escalating territorial rows between Beijing and its neighbours.

The drills will be held off the west coast of the Philippines' main island of Luzon, said Lieutenant Rommel Rodriguez, spokesman for Filipino side of the operations.

China claims most of the South China Sea -- including waters approaching its neighbours' coastlines -- and has been increasingly assertive in staking these claims.

But Rodriguez said the CARAT (Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training) joint exercises, involving nearly 1,000 troops from both countries, were a regular annual event and he dismissed any connection to rising tensions in the region.

"All of our exercises will be conducted in our territorial waters. This has nothing to do with any dispute," he told AFP.

The Philippines has accused China of using "bullying" tactics in the sea, which lies on key shipping routes and is believed to harbour massive gas deposits, and Manila is lobbying for a UN tribunal to declare the Asian giant's territorial claims invalid.

Beijing placed an oil rig in disputed waters last month, sparking deadly anti-China riots in Vietnam, and on Friday announced that it was sending another four rigs to the sea. It was unclear whether any of them would be in contested areas.

The USS John McCain, an American destroyer, as well as the landing ship USS Ashland will join Philippine navy vessels for the exercises, which will last from June 26 until July 1, Rodriguez said.

They will include search and rescue, boarding and salvage drills as well as gunnery exercises next Saturday and Sunday, he added.

Rodriguez stressed that the exercises would take place "very far" from the Scarborough Shoal, an outcrop in the South China Sea currently guarded by Chinese government vessels, which was the scene of a tense standoff with the Philippines in 2012.

Manila, which has one of the weakest militaries in the region, has been increasingly turning to its main defence ally Washington to back it up against China.

The allies recently signed a new defence accord giving US forces greater access to Filipino bases in the former US colony.

Although the United States has taken no side in the territorial disputes, it has warned China against taking "destabilising actions" in the South China Sea.

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