The Biden administration is working with the Philippines to develop “procedures and protocols on cooperative maritime law enforcement operations” in the South China Sea, the two governments have announced.

“We’re still hoping that we can include Australia and Japan, but it still has to be worked out by the [Philippine Department of National Defense],” Ambassador Jose Manuel Romualdez, the Philippines’s top envoy to the United States, told a state media outlet. “They’ve already talked about it. It’s just putting some flesh into it.”