Asia-Pacific nations plan disaster drills

Singapore: Asia-Pacific states are discussing a plan to hold military-led disaster relief exercises in the Philippines next year, senior defence officials said on Wednesday. At a defence dialogue on the sidelines of the annual meetings of the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean), officials expressed the need to plan and test how member states could help each other during disasters such as the recent Myanmar cyclone, the China quake and Philippines ferry sinking. "The United States was pushing for actual exercises among members of the Asean Regional Forum to be held in the Philippines next year," said a senior defence official from a Southeast Asian state, who declined to be named. "The officials said typhoons and disasters are killing more people and causing more destruction in the last few years since the tsunami... [read full story]