Philippine govt holds off military action on rebels

Philippine govt holds off military action on rebels

MANILA (Reuters): The Philippine government backed away from military action against Muslim rebels and said on Wednesday it was still clinging to hopes negotiations would succeed in freeing 19 hostages, six of them foreigners.

President Joseph Estrada cut short a visit to the United States and flew home a day early as criticism mounted over the government's failure to stop the hostage-taking and calls grew for a military assault on the rebel lair in the south.

The Abu Sayyaf burst on to the international stage in April when they took 21 hostages, including 10 tourists, from a remote Malaysian diving resort. The rebels struck again on Sunday, taking three Malaysians from another remote Malaysian island off Borneo in a further embarrassment to the government.

Usually an advocate of restraint, even Vice-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo urged a military strike, saying, "Terrorism should be excised like cancer, swiftly and in toto. We support the call for military action, the sooner the better."

Arroyo also called for a U.S.-led multinational blockade of the southern Philippine seas to thwart any further rebel attempt to snatch hostages from tourist resorts in neighboring countries and spirit them to their jungle hideouts on southern Jolo island. But the doves held sway.

Despite strong signals in recent days that Manila was considering military action, presidential spokesman Ricardo Puno said the government would still give negotiations a chance.

"All options are open, no options were closed but ... we are still waiting for developments in the negotiations," Puno said after a special cabinet meeting on security attended by the armed forces and national police chiefs.

He said the government would not act rashly because of concern for the hostages' lives.

"We will not exercise them simply because there are a lot of voices that say, 'Go ahead and get them'. We cannot be stampeded into any action but these options have not been foreclosed in any way," Puno said.

Defense Secretary Orlando Mercado told reporters before the meeting that the country was being made to look weak. "We have been bending backwards for so long we are beginning to look like contortionists and people might think we don't have a spine," Mercado said. "I think it's high time to find a lasting solution to this problem."

After the meeting, Mercardo told Reuters: "I have to go by the views of the majority."

In the latest incident, Abu Sayyaf rebels kidnapped three Malaysian men from Malaysia's Pandanan resort on Sunday in an imitation of the April 23 abduction of 21 people, including 10 foreign tourists, from the nearby Sipadan resort.

Twenty of those victims have been freed after being held for months on Jolo, a small, tadpole-shaped island 960 km south of Manila where the rebels are based.

The rebels also hold two French journalists kidnapped on Jolo in July while covering the hostage crisis, an American Muslim who was visiting the rebel camp and 12 Filipino evangelists who went to the rebel hideout to fast and pray for the hostages.

Puno said there was no pressure from France to avoid a military solution.

Vice-President Arroyo proposed "a multinational quarantine of the Sulu Sea" to stop further rebel cross-country kidnapping. Such a force could include ships from Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and the U.S. Pacific command, she said.

Malaysia on Wednesday asked the Philippine rebels to release unconditionally three Malaysians taken hostage from an island off Borneo this week.

The Foreign Ministry, in the first official reaction since the incident on Sunday, said the government was deeply concerned over the hostage taking, the second by the Philippine group in less than five months.