By Laurie Chen and Mikhail Flores
BEIJING/MANILA (Reuters) – China’s Defense Ministry on Thursday strongly condemned the deployment of a U.S. intermediate-range missile system in the northern Philippines during military exercises in April, saying it “results in enormous risks of war in the region.
Defense Ministry spokesperson Wu Qian told a news briefing in Beijing that China remains very vigilant and opposes the deployment, the first in the Indo-Pacific region.
“The practices of the United States and the Philippines have brought the entire region under fire from the United States (and) brought enormous risks of war to the region,” Wu said, adding that this “severely compromised” regional peace.
“Intermediate-range missiles are strategic and offensive weapons with strong Cold War connotations,” Wu said.
China deploys its own advanced intermediate-range missiles as part of a large arsenal of conventional ballistic missiles.
The United States announced last month that it had deployed its Typhoon missile system to the Philippines as part of its Balikatan, or “shoulder to shoulder,” military exercises.
Philippine military official Col. Michael Logico said in April that the missile system, capable of launching Tomahawk land attacks and SM-6 missiles, had been brought to the city of Laoag in the province of Ilocos Norte, in the northern Philippines.
But officials did not say whether the weapons system was transported elsewhere or remained in the Philippines.
The Philippine and U.S. militaries did not fire the missile system during the exercises, but Logico said it was shipped to test the feasibility of airlifting the 40-ton weapon system.
A Philippine military spokesperson could not be reached for comment Thursday.
This year’s annual exercises involved about 16,000 Filipino and U.S. troops, some of which took place in the northern Philippine islands near Taiwan and in western waters facing the South China Sea, where China is in conflict with the Philippines and other regional claimants.
The exercises angered China at the time and it warned of destabilization when countries outside the region “show strength and stir up confrontation”.
Philippine and U.S. officials said the exercises were aimed at improving interoperability between their forces and were not directed against any third country.
(Reporting by Laurie Chen in Beijing and Karen Lema and Mikhail Flores in Manila; writing by Greg Torode; editing by David Holmes)
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