Philippines verifying reports of Chinese missile warehouse in South China Sea

February 22, 2017

The Philippine government is looking into reports that China has almost finished building  almost two dozen structures to store surface-to-air missiles in disputed man-made islands in theSouth China Sea.

“We have to verify this report first,” Foreign Affairs spokesman Charles Jose said Wednesday.

China’s embassy in Manila has yet to respond to a request for comment on the report.

On Tuesday, Philippine Foreign Secretary Perfecto Yasay said ASEAN Foreign Ministers, who finished a closed-door meeting in Boracay, were “unanimous” in expressing concern on the militarization of the South China Sea.

“China has installed weapons systems in these facilities that they have established and they have expressed a strong concern about this,” Yasay said at a press conference.

“As to whether or not the dismantling of these weapons system near objective of militarization will be dependent upon how we will be able to forge that Code of Conduct. We're trying to establish to see through the objectives that we would like to achieve in securing the non-militarization of the area,” Yasay added. DMS