SPEAKER Prospero Nograles on Tuesday said Malacañang should give assurance it can guarantee that its request that the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG) and Scarborough Shoal should be treated as a “regime of islands” and not a part of the country’s archipelagic baseline will not endanger the country’s legal claim on the disputed areas in the South China Sea.

“The House may seriously consider Malacañang’s proposal but we want to make sure that it will not have any repercussion on our claims. Once we submit our baseline to the UN, it becomes a permanent record, so we really have to balance this issue very carefully,” said Nograles.

House Bill 3216, or An Act Defining the Archipelagic Baselines of the Philippine Archipelago, Amending for the Purpose Republic Act (RA) 3046, as Amended by RA 5446, is scheduled to be passed on third and final reading when session resumes on April 21.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, in a letter to Nograles dated April 4, reaffirmed the position of the Executive on the Philippine archipelagic baseline, which is “to enclose the main archipelago within the baselines and treat the Kalayaan Group of Islands as a regime of islands.”

Nograles said that while he supports Malacañang’s position on the baselines bill, there is a need to consider the possibility that it can also be wrong.

“Malacañang can be right, but it can also be wrong. We have to be very careful about this,” he said.

The Speaker said he wants to find out if the other claimants—including China, Vietnam, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and Taiwan—do have not legislated territorial lines similarly putting enclosures in the disputed areas.

He said he also wants to know if the other claimants have already submitted such documents to the United Nations.

Nograles said that removing the provisions in the baselines bill that defines the country’s baselines to include areas in the disputed territories should be carefully studied because this can run in conflict with our present territorial claims in the South China Sea.

“I advised House foreign affairs chairman Antonio Cuenco to study this very carefully and look at the merits of the executive position on the law on baseline,” he said.

“This baseline bill, once it becomes a law will be a permanent document that will be submitted to the UN and we don’t want to weaken our claim on these territories based on technicality,” he added.

Nograles said that he would defer to the wisdom of Cuenco as he pointed the need to come out with the baseline law in compliance with the United Nations’ May 2009 deadline for the submission of the country’s claims to extended continental shelf areas.

“Congressman Cuenco’s committee is in the best position to make a stand on this issue because it has conducted exhaustive hearings and studies which may go for or against the position of Malacañang,” Nograles said.

Besides, Nograles said that ultimately it would be the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea and the international courts that would judge whether the measure complied with international law.

Senate to SC: Reverse ruling on executive privilege

THE Senate on Tuesday asked the Supreme Court (SC) to reverse its March 25 ruling upholding the legality of President Arroyo’s invocation of executive privilege to prevent former National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) chairman Romulo Neri from divulging details of their conversation with regard to the aborted $329-million national broadband network project of the government with China’s ZTE Co.

MEMBERS of civil society on Tuesday condemned the President’s veto of the provision in the General Appropriation Act which suspended the payment of interest for questionable loans, including the substandard Austrian medical-waste incinerators installed in 26 public hospitals run by the Department of Health (DOH).

SIX Filipino seafarers were among the 30 crewmen who were taken hostage on board a French-registered cruise ship Le Ponant on Friday in the gulf between Somalia and Yemen, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) said on Tuesday.

ZAMBOANGA CITY—The foreign donor community has reaffirmed support for Mindanao’s peace and development, citing the need to move the peace process and harmonize convergence of foreign aid in the region.

THE Philippine National Police (PNP) is now coordinating with the Indonesian government for the possible taking of tissue samples from the relatives of Indonesian terrorist Dulmatin to help in identifying the latter through DNA tests.

SPEAKER Prospero Nograles on Tuesday said Malacañang should give assurance it can guarantee that its request that the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG) and Scarborough Shoal should be treated as a “regime of islands” and not a part of the country’s archipelagic baseline will not endanger the country’s legal claim on the disputed areas in the South China Sea.

THE Senate is poised to open a separate inquiry into the multibillion-peso swine scam involving public funds released as loans by the Quedan and Rural Credit Guarantee Corp. (Quedancor) to still-unidentified beneficiaries.

A government team led by Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita will leave for Geneva on Wednesday to report administration efforts to improve the Philippines’ human-rights record before the United Nations, Malacañang said on Tuesday.

A Japanese businessman faces the prospect of having his business visa canceled after he assaulted the daughter of a prominent Cebu politician at the Centennial 2 passenger terminal on Wednesday morning.