Malacañang has asked congressmen to exclude the disputed islets and reefs in the country’s territory. The appeal is apparently intended to avoid friction with China, which had offered the country more than $1 billion in loans up to the end of President Arroyo’s term in 2010. - philstar.com

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita has written to Speaker Prospero Nograles to ask the House to reconsider the bill and treat the disputed Spratlys as a “regime of islands, instead of enclosing it in the country’s archipelagic baselines.” - inquirer.net

Cuenco said at the regular Ayes and Nays Forum on how he was pressured by the Executive Department against approving the controversial bill on third and final reading just days after it was approved by the House unanimously on second reading December 13. - dpinoyweb.com

to be continued…

President Arroyo has ordered the junking of the archipelagic baselines bills, according to Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago.

“What we are talking about here is propriety. In defining the baseline, do we include them or just leave them as they are as the Kalayaan Island Group then let us establish our own archipelagic state through a baseline that would just enclose the regular line in the archipelago,” Ermita said.

Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez meanwhile called on Congress to exercise prudence on the crafting of a bill that would redefine the country’s baselines or territorial boundaries under UNCLOS.

“The House position will include the Kalayaan Islands under our baselines. But we find that if we include Kalayaan in our baselines, we will have to include the Chinese portions and the Vietnamese occupied portions,” he said.

“How can we include these in our baselines. We might have to go to war against China and Vietnam if we include their claimed territories in our baselines,” Gonzalez told reporters. - Philippine Star