Manila finds bomb plot, links Asian group to blast
Manila finds bomb plot, links Asian group to blast
John O'Callaghan and Ruben Alabastro, Reuters, Manila
The Philippines said on Wednesday it uncovered a plan by Moro rebels to stage reprisal attacks if the United States invades Iraq and suggested a radical Southeast Asian group may be linked to a deadly blast last week.
Eight days after 21 people were killed in the southern city of Davao, police said they arrested a man carrying two grenades and a mobile phone with numbers of extremists suspected of hatching a "diabolical plot to sow terror" in Manila.
The little-known Raja Solaiman Movement planned bombings "in case the United States and its allies attack Iraq" and to support the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), said Reynaldo Velasco, head of Philippine National Police operations in the capital.
Murder charges over the March 4 attack at Davao airport have been filed against 151 guerrillas from the MILF, the largest of four groups fighting for an Islamic homeland in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic country.
The group has denied any involvement in the worst terror attack in the Philippines since 22 people were killed in a series of bombings in Manila in December 2000.
Jamaah Islamiyah -- a regional religious group linked by Western intelligence agencies to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and blamed for deadly bombings in Bali last October -- may have had a hand in the Davao blast, security officials said.
"That seems to be the developing assessment," National Bureau of Investigation director Reynaldo Wycoco told reporters.
He said there were similarities between the Davao attack and the bombings in Manila that led to the jailing of self-confessed Jamaah Islamiah member Fathur al-Ghozi last year. The Indonesian told Philippine investigators he was helped by MILF rebels. "The modus operandi is the same," Wycoco said.
Indonesian police are investigating Jamaah Islamiah's possible involvement in bombings on the resort island of Bali on Oct. 12 that killed about 202 people, mostly foreign tourists.
Singapore and Malaysia have arrested scores of people accused of being members of the group.
The Davao bombing, threats of more rebel violence and fresh fighting in the southern Philippines have done nothing to bolster investor confidence shaken by bulging budget deficits, a tumbling peso and pervasive corruption.
The army said five soldiers and more than 100 MILF guerrillas had been killed, mostly by howitzer fire and rockets launched by helicopter gunships, over the past two days as the rebels tried to recapture a key stronghold in the town of Pikit.
"They kept on advancing like they would not be hit by bullets," military spokesman Maj. Julieto Ando told Reuters.
The government said on Monday it was offering "the hand of peace" to rebels who renounce violence.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo dispatched former Foreign Minister Roberto Romulo to Malaysia on Wednesday to seek its help in persuading the MILF to resume stalled peace talks.
Malaysia is brokering the negotiations but the MILF wants troops out of its base in Pikit before it will talk to Manila.
"I am calling on the MILF to take clear and specific moves to step out of the boundaries of terrorism," Arroyo told reporters.
U.S. troops are now training Philippine units in the jungles near the southern city of Zamboanga and are due to start another series of counter-terrorism exercises soon.
The communist New People's Army said on Tuesday U.S. soldiers would be "legitimate targets" if the new exercises were held near its strongholds and that it had forged an alliance with the MILF for mutual support but not joint attacks.