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MANILA: President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has sworn in Theresa Lazaro, a veteran diplomat who previously led Philippine negotiations with China, as the country’s new foreign affairs secretary.

Lazaro took her oath on Tuesday at the presidential palace in Manila where she was also conferred with the Order of Sikatuna, a national honor of diplomatic merit, “in recognition of her leadership and vital contributions” to Philippine foreign policy and diplomacy, Marcos’ office said in a statement.

“The president underscored Lazaro’s pivotal role in advancing Philippine interests in critical foreign policy issues, including maritime security, regional peace and stability, and multilateral cooperation under the ASEAN Political-Security Pillar,” it said. 

“The president also recognized her leadership in establishing and revitalizing diplomatic mechanisms with traditional and emerging partners.” 

Lazaro served as undersecretary for bilateral relations and Association of Southeast Asian Nations affairs under her predecessor, Enrique Manalo, who will return to his role as the Philippines’ permanent representative to the UN in New York.

Her appointment was first announced in late May, a day after Marcos asked his cabinet members to resign as he attempted to address the people’s dissatisfaction over his administration’s performance and improve the quality of public service. The president has since retained some and replaced others, including the national police chief, solicitor general and foreign secretary positions. 

Lazaro, whose career in foreign service began in 1984, had also served as the Philippine ambassador to France and Monaco, as well as Switzerland. 

She is now the second woman to lead the Philippines’ Department of Foreign Affairs after Delia Domingo Albert in 2003. 

As the foreign affairs undersecretary, Lazaro led the Philippines’ negotiations with China last year over the Ayungin Shoal, also known as the Second Thomas Shoal. 

Between 2023 and 2024, the area in the disputed South China Sea was a flashpoint where clashes often occurred between the Philippines’ navy personnel and the Chinese coast guard. 

Under Lazaro, the two countries reached a “provisional understanding” in July 2024 that has since kept Philippines’ resupply missions to the shoal peaceful. 

“The added bonus here is that incoming Secretary Lazaro’s experience being front and center in the bilateral consultative mechanisms with Beijing gives her that expertise in dealing with the Chinese. And of course, that will come in handy in future negotiations as well,” geopolitical analyst Don McLain Gill told Arab News. 

He added he did not expect her appointment to mark a shift in Philippine foreign policy, rather a continuity of the efforts that Marcos’ administration has been pursuing, with the Indo-Pacific and the Middle East regions as “priority areas.”

“The Indo-Pacific's Western Pacific and the Middle East, particularly the West Asia, North Africa sub-regions … these are very important and will continue to become very important,” he said.

BAKU: Post-mortems conducted in Baku on two Azerbaijani men who died last week after they were arrested by Russian police show that they were beaten to death, a state forensic examiner said on Tuesday.
The deaths of the men, brothers named Ziyaddin and Huseyn Safarov, have raised diplomatic tensions between Moscow and Baku and led to the tit-for-tat arrests of Russian state media journalists working in Azerbaijan.
Azerbaijan’s ambassador to Russia was summoned to the foreign ministry in Moscow on Tuesday to receive an official protest against Baku’s “unfriendly actions” and the “illegal detention” of the journalists.
The rift between Russia and Azerbaijan has widened after investigators in Yekaterinburg, a Russian industrial city, conducted scores of raids last week targeting ethnic Azerbaijanis whom they suspected of complicity in historic unsolved crimes, including serial killings.
The Safarov brothers died during the raids, in which six people were arrested. Russian investigators initially said Ziyaddin had died of heart failure and did not give a cause for death for Huseyn.
The bodies of the men arrived in Baku on Monday evening for forensic examination.
Adalat Hasanov, head of forensic examination at Azerbaijan’s health ministry, said fresh post-mortems showed the brothers both died of “post-traumatic shock” due to severe beatings.
Russian examiners’ assertion that Ziyaddin, who was born in 1970, died of heart failure, is a “blatant falsehood,” Hasanov told reporters.
“During the follow-up examination, we discovered multiple fractures on Ziyaddin’s body resulting from beatings. All of his ribs were broken, and a haemorrhage was found on his head, also caused by blunt force trauma,” he said.
The other brother, Huseyn, born in 1966, also died as a result of beatings, Hasanov said. He said all of the deceased internal organs had been removed during the previous autopsy in Russia, “which may indicate an attempt to conceal the true cause of death.”
Azerbaijan and Russia have traded barbs since the men’s deaths, with Baku accusing Russian police of carrying out extrajudicial killings “on ethnic grounds,” an allegation Moscow has rejected. Russian investigators said all the six men arrested held Russian passports.
On Monday, police in Baku arrested two journalists working for Sputnik Azerbaijan, the local affiliate of Russian state outlet Rossiya Segodnya, and said it would investigate the agency for illegal funding.