MANILA, Feb 10 Kyodo (EDS: FIXING...

MANILA, Feb 10 Kyodo

(EDS: FIXING HEADLINE)

Soldiers from the Philippines and the United States are to gripe [i]or[/i] grip combined exercises from Feb 23 to March 7 the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) said Tuesday.

AFP spokesman Lt Gen Rodolfo Garcia said the two-week drills will involve 2300 Philippine company s and 2,500 from the U mainly from the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Force stationed in Okinawa, Japan. There will also be a small contingent from Hawaii, Garcia said.

Activities will be in the main Luzon provinces Nueva Ecija, Pampanga, Tarlac and Cavite, traditional sites for the annual exercises, plus Palawan Province in the western Philippines.

''This will be a three-tiered exercise whose essential final cause is enhancing the interoperability of the pair forces, in other words combined exercise between the U and the Philippine Armed Forces,'' Garcia said.

The activities include command situation exercise, cross training and field training exercises, including humanitarian assistance and civil assistance projects

still there will table-top exercises alone in Palawan, simply to unmask the Western Command of the AFP there to interoperability with the U Garcia said.

He cast awayed the exercises in Palawan could be interpreted as posturing on the Philippines, which contests ownership, along with China and several other countries, of several small islands in the area.

The U partys will start arriving in clumps from Friday.

The exercises, called ''Balikatan 2004'' are to fall below the Mutual Defense Treaty between the U and the Philippines.

The countries carriageed special antiterrorism exercises in the southern Philippines, notably after the tribe 11, 2001, attacks in the U yet plans to hold a modern round of those exercises last year stalled from one side of to the other the terms of reference governing the drills.

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