JI is Philippines top national security threat: Arroyo
JI is Philippines top national security threat: Arroyo
Jason Gutierrez, Agence France -Presse, Manila
President Gloria Arroyo on Friday elevated the Jamaah Islamiyah
(JI) as the Philippines' number one security threat, saying the
al-Qaeda linked group was capable of carrying out far-reaching
terror attacks.
The JI, which experts say espouses the establishment of a
radical Pan-Islamic enclave across Southeast Asia, has surpassed
Filipino insurgent groups as the armed forces' foremost concern,
she said.
There is now a need to "update our priorities", Arroyo said
noting that the government was to resume peace talks with the
Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) while the communist New
People's Army (NPA) and the Abu Sayyaf were already a spent
force.
"We are elevating the JI into our official national threat
spectrum," Arroyo said in a statement.
"We are going into a more focused campaign against the JI,
complete with a new order of battle and targets for domestic and
transnational intelligence in concert with our allies," the
president, a staunch anti-terror partner of the United States,
added.
Recent arrests of top JI leaders in the Philippines have
exposed that the group's plans "are both deadly and far-ranging"
and could threaten the stability of the region, Arroyo said.
The statement came a day after she announced the arrest of
Taufik Rifki, a 23-year-old Indonesian who is allegedly the JI's
number two man in the southern Philippines.
Rifki, who was arrested in the south early this month, is
believed to have trained under JI bomb expert Fathur Rohman Al-
Ghozi. Al-Ghozi earlier escaped from a Manila police jail but was
subsequently gunned down by security forces in the south.
Officials said some 40 other JI militants, most of whom are
believed to be Indonesian, are on the loose in the southern
island of Mindanao, where a massive manhunt has been launched.
Police said Rifki has confessed under interrogation of being
the JI's "finance and liaison officer" responsible for funding
deadly bombings in the south. His arrest led government forces to
an alleged JI hideout, where they recovered bomb-making equipment
and radical Islamic literature.
The 12,500-strong MILF is the country's main Muslim force that
is negotiating peace with Manila. It has denounced links to the
JI, which authorities said is the Southeast Asian arm of Osama
bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
The Abu Sayyaf is a small group of militants wanted for
bombings and kidnappings in the southern Philippines and
Malaysia, while the NPA is the armed wing of the underground
Communist Party of the Philippines.
Arroyo warned the MILF to keep to the terms of a cease-fire
pact it signed with Manila, under which it promised to turn over
to security forces any JI members and other terrorists who seek
shelter in its camps in southern Mindanao island.
"I want the MILF specifically to stand clear of the JI,
because we have special teams on the trail of the JI fugitives,"
Arroyo told a forum of the Foreign Correspondents Association.
"I don't want the manhunt to get in the way of the peace
talks," she said, adding that intelligence units were preparing a
list of known JI leaders to be transmitted to the MILF.
Asked if her government would allow a more direct U.S. role in
the anti-terror campaign, Arroyo said it would, as long as it was
"to the extent allowed by the constitution".
The constitution bars foreign combatants on Philippine soil,
but U.S. Special Forces have been training and equipping Filipino
soldiers against the Abu Sayyaf for the past two years. There are
also plans to expand the joint military training in other
troubled areas in the south.