MANILA – Four months before she is to step down from power on June 30, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is to embark on yet another foreign trip to the US, Vietnam and possibly Spain in April, reliable Malacanang sources revealed.
The sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, disclosed that the preparations for the President’s visit to the US and Vietnam are being coordinated by Malacanang protocol officials and their counterparts from the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Under the draft itinerary which has yet to be finalized, the sources said President Arroyo would first proceed to Washington to attend the Nuclear Security Summit.
About 40 heads of states, including President Arroyo, are to attend the summit to be hosted by US President Barack Obama.
In his first state of the nation address before the US Congress, Obama cited the urgent need to hold the summit, saying that nuclear weapons are “perhaps the greatest danger to the American people.â€
The sources pointed out President Arroyo’s presence at the summit is critical because the Philippines hosted in early February a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) workshop attended by foreign experts.
The results of the Manila workshop, the sources said, are to be included in the agenda of the Washington summit.
Moreover, they stressed the need for President Arroyo’s attendance at the summit because she will represent the upcoming NPT review conference to be hosted by the United Nations in May.
Presiding over the UN conference as the elected president is Ambassador Libran Cabactulan, the former Philippine envoy to the United Arab Emirates, according to the sources.
They added there is no word yet on whether the President would hold bilateral talks with Obama but did not discount the possibility of “pull-aside meetings†at the sidelines of the Washington summit.
Also still being worked out, the sources said, is whether President Arroyo will proceed directly from Washington to the Vietnamese capital of Hanoi which is hosting the annual meeting of leaders of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) starting April 18.
Aside from the Philippines and Vietnam, the other Asean members are Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar (Burma).
From Hanoi, the sources said arrangements are being made if the President could fly straight to Spain which, aside from the US, appears to be one of her favorite foreign destinations.
With her upcoming trips to the US, Vietnam and Spain, this would make President Arroyo the most traveled of the Philippines heads of state since she took over Malacanang with the ouster of then president Joseph Estrada by the Edsa 11 People Power revolution in January 2001.
Based on unofficial records, the President would have made more than 80 foreign trips since 2001 which critics assailed have constituted a major drain on the country’s financial resources and which could have been put to better use by helping ease pervasive poverty particularly in the countryside.
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