Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief Lt. Gen. Bartolome Bacarro named five additional proposed sites that may be used under the enhanced defense cooperation agreement (EDCA) with the United States.

Bacarro said two sites are located in Cagayan, one in Palawan, one in Zambales and another one in Isabela.

"It will be subject to, the technical working group is discussing that, those five (areas) were mentioned, then these will still be subject to approval of Department of National Defense (DND) and Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA)," he said.

"That's for 2023 because we have to finish the EDCA projects before we will start the other... those that were already in the program, they are targeting to complete it by 2022 supposed to be, the five new programs will depend on the approval of both sides," he added.

Faustino said the five additional EDCA sites which were discussed during the Mutual Defense Board (MDB) Security Engagement Board meeting in Hawaii in September still have "to go through a process".

"During the MDB SEB held in Hawaii there were some additional edca sites being considered but it still has to go through a process, of course we have to consider some constitution provisions, some of our national laws before we could go into that," he said.

"Right now we'll just, we forwarded to the DFA their comments regarding the additional EDCA sites," he added.

Faustino noted that the facilities under the EDCA are owned by the Philippine government.

"This is enhanced defense cooperation sites that we use for training facilities, warehouses and previously we already have five EDCA agreed locations and there are ongoing projects now and for the next two years the concentration will be on the completion of the projects within EDCA," he said.

"These are humanitarian assistance and disaster response (HADR), mostly HADR and for training facilities where we house like contingents which we have Balikatan exercises like this one, operations center, these are the facilities that are being built, nothing like, of course our constitution prohibits nuclear, nothing of that sort, and the weapons of mass destruction, definitely we will not allow it," Faustino stressed.

"These facilities are Philippine owned and if the Americans use it they have to ask permission from us before they could do that so it is owned by the Philippine government," he added.

It can be recalled that the EDCA between the US and Philippines was signed hours before the arrival of former American President Barack Obama in the Philippines for a two-day state visit in 2014. Robina Asido/DMS