Arroyo orders 'all-out war' on Abu Sayyaf rebels
Arroyo orders 'all-out war' on Abu Sayyaf rebels
MANILA (Agencies): President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ordered "all-out war" on a band of Abu Sayyaf extremists on Monday, hours after they vowed to behead a U.S. hostage to mark the leader's birthday.
"We will pursue every one of them relentlessly," Arroyo said in a press conference of the Abu Sayyaf group in the southern Philippines. "We shall annihilate them. We will never, ever negotiate with them."
The attack order comes as Arroyo prepares for peace talks with communist rebels of the New People's Army and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a larger Muslim rebel group.
Hours before Arroyo's announcement, Abu Sabaya, an Abu Sayyaf leader, told the local Radio Mindanao Network that his men will behead 25-year-old Oakland native Jeffrey Schilling, captive since last August, on Thursday to mark Arroyo's 54th birthday.
Abu Sayyaf beheaded two Filipino hostages last year, on April 19, as a "birthday gift" to then-President Joseph Estrada as he turned 63.
Sabaya has threatened several times to kill Schilling in an effort to persuade the Philippine or the U.S. government to pay a $10-million ransom for his release. He tried to convince authorities Monday that he is serious this time.
"We are not joking," Sabaya added. "You better inform his mother in the U.S. about his execution so she may talk for the last time to her son."
In contrast to her conciliatory statement to other insurgents, Arroyo said Monday that any Abu Sayyaf member who voluntarily surrenders will face charges anyway. The government has offered amnesty in the past to surrendered members of other armed groups.
"They are a money-crazed gang of criminals," Arroyo said. "They have no ideology." Arroyo said she talked to U.S. officials in the Philippines before ordering the assault and they backed the action.
The U.S. government announced on Monday that the U.S. Agency for International Development and a private group, Action against Hunger, are to provide some $422,625 to help about 30,000 of the Mindanao evacuees.
Arroyo said on Monday that thousands of Filipinos displaced by a Muslim separatist rebellion are streaming back to their war- ravaged villages in the island of Mindanao on the eve of a ceasefire.
"As a result of the work of the Interact-Mindanao (the government committee for rehabilitation), evacuees have started to return to their villages, some of which are located in Abubakar," Arroyo told a press conference.
Arroyo estimated last February, when she declared a unilateral truce, that half of the estimated 600,000 people displaced by the military operation had yet to return home.
The military campaign, which cost the government a billion pesos ($20 million) to prosecute according to Arroyo aides, led to the collapse of peace talks and a terrorist backlash of deadly bombings of population centers in Manila and elsewhere.
After secret high-level talks brokered by Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur last month, the MILF agreed to hold peace talks and to declare a ceasefire.
Military Chief of Staff Diomedio Villanueva said Monday the Abu Sayyaf has 1,200 armed members.
Abu Sayyaf, which says it is fighting for a Muslim homeland, operates mainly on the island of Jolo, about 940 kilometers (580 miles) south of Manila.
Estrada ordered a mass assault last September, using the navy to blockade Jolo while artillery and bomber airplanes pummeled the island to make way for mass infantry attacks.
But the army complained the rebels drop weapons and blend in with the civilians to escape assaults. Sporadic clashes have continued since Estrada's one-month assault.
Arroyo's administration is also scheduled to start peace talks April 27 with communist rebels of the New People's Army which is fighting nationwide to overthrow the government.