Clinton to Offer Support to Philippines, Thailand

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will announce new support for the Philippines and flood-hit Thailand as she shores up ties with key U.S. allies, officials said Tuesday.

Clinton arrived Tuesday in the Philippines and will head later this week to Thailand, part of a renewed U.S. focus on Asia. President Barack Obama is travelling separately to Australia, another longtime ally in the region.

Officials accompanying Clinton said she would hold talks Wednesday with Philippine President Benigno Aquino and tour a warship, at a time of high tension between Manila and Beijing over disputed South China Sea territories.

The United States recently provided the Philippines with a destroyer and Clinton will discuss offering a second one, the officials said.

They said Clinton would also look for ways to step up cooperation at sea. Recent U.S. military efforts with its former colony have focused on fighting Islamic guerrillas in the southern region of Mindanao.

"We are now in the process of diversifying and changing the nature of our engagement. We will continue those efforts in the south, but we are focusing more on maritime capabilities," a senior State Department official said on condition of anonymity.

A Defense Department official said that the United States was not seeking to stir up tensions in the South China Sea, where Beijing is locked in myriad disputes with countries including the Philippines and Vietnam.

The Philippines has "what they feel are legitimate claims in the South China Sea and they are being contested by other countries," the official said.

"We're very sensitive to making sure that this does not in any way alarm or provoke anybody else," he said.

But relations between the United States and China have been uneasy, with Obama pressing President Hu Jintao during a weekend summit on a range of issues from intellectual property rights to the level of the Chinese yuan.

Obama welcomed leaders from 20 other Pacific Rim economies to the weekend summit in his native Hawaii where he built momentum for an emerging free trade agreement that would span the Pacific -- but does not include China.

Clinton and Obama have vowed to put a new focus on the Asia-Pacific region, saying that the United States wants to help build the emerging institutions of the fast-growing region that is vital both for the U.S. economy and security.

In a speech last week, Clinton said that the United States was "updating" relationships with its five treaty-bound regional allies -- Australia, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand.

"These five alliances are the fulcrum for our efforts in the Asia-Pacific," Clinton said at the East-West Center in Honolulu.

"They leverage our regional presence and enhance our regional leadership at a time of evolving security challenges," she said.

While U.S. policymakers have been upbeat about the Philippines under Aquino, they have been concerned over Thailand after an extended period of political chaos.

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, the sister of coup-ousted former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, came to power only in August and has come under intense pressure as she tackles major floods that have threatened the capital Bangkok.

The State Department official said Clinton would offer a "very substantial" aid package to Thailand and hoped to reach out to the public in America's oldest Asian ally.

"One of the messages that the secretary will bring directly to the Thai people and the government is that we believe it is in the national security and political interest of the United States to have this government succeed," the official said.

"We will do what we can to support that going forward. There are substantial tensions in Thailand and those tensions will not be resolved after one or even a few elections," he said.

Clinton and Obama will head later this week to Bali for an East Asia Summit, hoping to show a strong U.S. commitment to a forum where several Asian countries had initially sought to exclude the United States.