RP-Australia security pact delayed by legal requirements

The Philippines and Australia are working on a final draft of a proposed security pact allowing large-scale joint combat training, but the deal is unlikely to be signed when President Arroyo visits Australia, officials said Friday.Legal technicalities delayed the signing, Defense Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane told a forum with foreign correspondents, refusing to elaborate. Ebdane's predecessor, Avelino Cruz, earlier said the agreement was expected to be concluded before the end of last year."The problem is legal technicalities - the way we intepret the laws," Ebdane said. "That's the reason why the signing did not occur."Arroyo is scheduled to meet with Australian Prime Minister John Howard during her May 29-June 1 visit to Australia, presidential palace officials said."We will come up with a final draft soon," Ebdane said, adding that the Philippines wants a more stringent agreement than its Visiting Forces Agreement with the USThat agreement has been criticized following the detention of a US Marine, convicted of raping a Filipino woman, at the US Embassy instead of a Philippine jail.A senior official who refused to be named because he was not authorized to talk about the deal, said four pending issues have been resolved. They include Australia's opposition to the death penalty for Australian soldiers prosecuted for crimes in the Philippines - an issue that became moot when Arroyo abolished the death penalty last June.The official said both sides have also agreed on a review mechanism in cases when a soldier's duty status during the commission of a crime is in question.The Philippines has such an agreement only with the US, its longtime military ally.The Philippine Constitution prohibits the presence of foreign troops unless covered by a treaty, and bars them from local combat.Australia has provided limited counterterrorism training to Philippine security forces under military assistance programs, but it wants to play a bigger role, stressing that reducing threats in the Philippines would benefit Australia and the region.