Manila, Canberra may begin defence treaty talks soon

MANILA, May 25 (Reuters) Manila and Canberra expect to start formal negotiations soon to forge a security pact allowing Australian troops to train in the Southeast Asian nation, the Philippine defence secretary said today.

Avelino Cruz said he was confident a status of forces agreement with Australia would be signed within the year.

''The target is as soon as practicable,'' he told reporters, a day after the Philippines and the United States created a new security arrangement to deal with threats such as terrorism, piracy, disasters and diseases.

Troops in the Philippines, a mainly Roman Catholic country, are fighting long-running Muslim and communist insurgencies.

Canberra, which has shown deep concern over the activities of Islamic militants in the southern Philippines since the 2002 Bali bombing, already provides annual training for about 60 Filipino soldiers in Australia.

A handful of Australian federal police officers is based in the Philippines to train local police units in bomb-investigation methods and Canberra has donated 3.8 million dollars worth of forensics equipment to boost Manila's ability to investigate attacks.

Another defence official told Reuters the Philippines had a draft agreement, patterned after the status of forces agreements used by members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, as a template to be offered to Australia and five neighbouring states.

''What we've done was a series of informal consultations with Australian counterparts,'' said the defence official, who declined to be named. ''We're now ready, by the second half of the year, to go into formal treaty negotiations.'' Southeast Asian countries want to deepen security ties in response to attacks by militant Islamists, growing piracy in the the busy Malacca Strait and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

The Philippines has started informal consultations with Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.

''We have to attune to the emerging security development and changing landscape,'' Cruz said. ''For so long, we were too focused on our relations with the Americans. We still have other friends in the region.'' REUTERS PR PC1634