The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Indian armed forces will establish working groups to facilitate structured and recurring staff-level talks to further advance cooperation between the AFP’s major services and their Indian counterparts.
The Department of National Defense (DND) said yesterday that the working groups will be established under the three Terms of Reference (TOR) recently signed by Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr and Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh.
The TORs were signed in New Delhi last August 5 during President Marcos Jr’s five-day state visit in India.
The three TORs call for the conduct of army-to-army, air force-to-air force, and navy-to-navy staff talks.
“These TORs serve as frameworks for establishing the respective working groups of the AFP major services with their Indian counterparts, facilitating structured and recurring staff-level talks,” the DND said in a statement.
The DND said these working groups will be “instrumental” in advancing cooperation in various areas.
such as military education and joint training, capability development, logistics, maritime domain awareness, and humanitarian assistance and disaster response, the DND said.
The DND said the signing of the TORs further strengthened the bilateral military cooperation of the two nations.
It described the President’s trip to India as a “landmark official visit,” noting that this reinformed the country’s “commitment to expand strategic partnerships across the Indo-Pacific region.”
The DND said President Marcos and Modi had “high-level discussions” and “expressed their shared commitment to upholding a rules-based international order, promoting regional peace and stability, and pursuing closer cooperation in defense, trade, technology, energy, and education.”
