ZAMBOANGA CITY, 27 January 2005 — Communist rebels yesterday warned it would target US forces secretly operating in the southern Philippines if it do not pull out from the strife-torn region, where Filipino troops are battling Maoist guerillas and terrorist groups tied to the Al-Qaeda network.
A rebel spokesman Gregorio Rosal accused President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of collaborating with the United States when she allowed US military advisers and combat troops to clandestinely operate in areas in the south where the New People’s Army (NPA) is actively operating.
Aside from the NPA rebels, the Abu Sayyaf group and Jemaah Islamiya militants, listed by the US as a foreign terrorist organizations, the larger Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and other kidnap gangs are also active in the southern Philippines.
“US military advisers who participate directly in the AFP’s war efforts will be regarded as members of an armed adversarial force. The New People’s Army is likewise ready to face interventionist US military advisers and troops in the battlefield. We will hold the Bush and Arroyo regimes responsible for the consequences,” Rosal said in a statement.
Filipino and US troops are to start a new joint anti-terrorism exercises in the southern Philippines under the so-called Project Bayanihan as part of the Washington’s security assistance to the Philippines.
Both countries held similar trainings in the past years in Zamboanga City and Basilan island, a stronghold of Abu Sayyaf militants in the south, and on several occasions Filipino and American troops conducted anti-terrorism warfare in Luzon where NPA forces are operating.
But Rosal said the joint RP-US military exercise is only a cover to secretly position American terror experts in Philippine military camps to monitor rebel groups in the south.
US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone said as much as 70 American soldiers are deployed in the southern Philippines and are helping the military to strengthen the fight against international terrorism.
Ricciardone said the US forces are working closely with the Southern Command to bring intelligence for the AFP.
