By Associated Press and Reuters Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said Friday that he told the US military that plans for joint patrols and naval exercises in the disputed South China Sea have been put on hold, the first concrete break in defense cooperation after months of increasingly strident comments by the country’s new president. Lorenzana also said that 107 US troops involved in operating surveillance drones against Muslim militants would be asked to leave the southern part of the country once the Philippines acquires those intelligence-gathering capabilities in the near future. The Philippine military, according to Lorenzana, could manage if the United States were to withdraw aid, insisting that the value of US military aid to the Philippines was “not that much.” “We can live without (that),” Lorenzana told a foreign correspondents’ forum and said that the military could ask Congress to make up for a shortfall of some $50 [...]
