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| Southeast Asia |
| Muslim rebels working with Manila govt |
| 2004-06-28 |
| Muslim separatists have joined government forces in tracking down terrorists, President Gloria Arroyo said yesterday, a day after a top United States military commander expressed concern that terrorists are training at rebel camps in the Philippines. The rebels of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the government ’are teaming up to weed out terrorist cells and we need to give this effort a chance’, Mrs Arroyo said in a statement. She noted that the armed conflict with the MILF ’is at an all-time low’ following a ceasefire last July and that the peace process was firmly on track to end the three-decade insurgency in the southern Philippines. Yet there had been concerns that Muslim militants from the regional terror group Jemaah Islamiah were training in MILF camps in the south. The rebels at first denied this but later agreed to verify the reports in cooperation with the government. ’We will be uncompromising against terror but we will give a chance to reasonable and feasible peace initiatives that will isolate and defeat terrorists,’ Mrs Arroyo said. Philippine military officials have said they were hunting up to 40 mostly Indonesian JI members on the southern island of Mindanao. US Pacific commander Admiral Thomas Fargo told reporters in southern Zamboanga city on Sunday that Washington was concerned over the JI presence and would discuss the problem with senior Philippine military officials during meetings in Manila this week. Admiral Fargo, who arrived in the Philippines for Mrs Arroyo’s inauguration on Wednesday, also said that American soldiers will train Filipino troops in counterterrorism. The US military started arming and training Filipino soldiers battling Muslim extremists in the southern Philippines two years ago. The exercises were credited with helping to cripple the Abu Sayyaf, a small but violent group linked to the Al-Qaeda terror network, on Basilan island, about 880km south of Manila. The new round of combat training will be held at an army camp in Zamboanga, a bustling southern port city where US-led training sessions have been held in the past, officials said. The Philippines is one of Washington’s closest allies. The US has pledged at least US$30 million (S$51 million) in development programmes for MILF areas once a final peace agreement has been reached. But US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone warned last year that Washington will withhold aid unless the MILF cuts ties to terrorists and outlaws. Rebel spokesman Eid Kabalu said earlier that his group had asked Malaysia, which is brokering the peace talks, to help establish a joint government-MILF group to pursue terrorists and bandits. |
| Posted by:TS(vice girl) |