RP eyes foreign extremists after airport blast

RP eyes foreign extremists after airport blast

MANILA (Reuters): The Philippines, on high alert after its main international airport was rocked by a bomb blast, said on Monday it was investigating the possible presence of foreign extremists in the country.

Presidential spokesman Ricardo Puno said police had "spotted "a couple of possible suspects that have been identified with some foreign groups" and expected arrests soon.

No one was hurt but an extension building outside the main terminal area of Manila's international airport was badly damaged by an explosion from a home-made device on Sunday, the fifth bomb attack in the capital in a month.

Puno said a check of airport records showed "there may be some personalities that have been coming here which have somehow been identified as being part of some terrorist groups.

"All I can say is that they're not Filipinos," he told reporters, without elaborating.

Police have arrested 26 Filipino militants and charged them with murder over two bomb attacks on Manila shopping malls.

No one has been arrested for the airport explosion but airport chief Colonel Antonio Gana said it could be the work of people "trying to create havoc... partly to destabilize the government".

The Manila bombings coincided with a surge of separatist militancy in the southern Philippines, where the Abu Sayyaf rebels have been holding 21 mostly foreign hostages for 44 days.

The bombings, hostage crisis and a flareup of fighting between the army and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a bigger separatist group, have posed the biggest security challenge to President Joseph Estrada in his two years in office.

Abu Sayyaf leader Galib Andang last week told Filipino and German reporters his group was backed by Saudi guerrilla suspect Osama bin Laden, one of the United States' most wanted men.

Bin Laden is accused of masterminding the August 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which killed more than 200 people. He is currently hiding in Afghanistan.

Government negotiators on Monday dangled offers of economic aid to the Abu Sayyaf separatists for the freedom of their 21 hostages, who renewed threats of suicide.

Negotiations between the government panel and the rebels were expected to resume on Wednesday in the rebels' stronghold on Jolo, 960 km south of Manila.

The government panel said the rebels had not yet demanded a ransom, but that judging from past kidnappings by the group, it was possible they might soon raise the issue.

"I think it may crop up...but we may bargain for livelihood assistance, infrastructure and other more durable forms of assistance like scholarships for those who did not have the benefit of education," presidential assistant secretary Farouk Hussain, a member of the government team, told Reuters.

Newspapers said the Abu Sayyaf wanted US$1 million for each hostage but the panel said it had not received such a demand.

The hostages, in an interview with a Philippine television broadcast on Monday, repeated previous warnings they might be driven to suicide if Manila did not win their freedom soon.

"If you ask them to stay six months more, everybody will be dead because they (may have already) committed suicide," French hostage Sonia Wendling said in the interview aired on Monday.

"The best thing is to hurry up everything."

The hostages -- nine Malaysians, three Germans, two French nationals, two South Africans, two Finns, two Filipinos and a Lebanese -- were abducted from a tourist resort on April 23.

A doctor allowed into the rebel camp to check on the hostages recommended four be hospitalized.

Many of the hostages are suffering from a range of complaints, including depression and infections.

The security headaches confronting Estrada come amid signs the economy is running out of steam, although Finance Secretary Jose Pardo said on Monday he was confident the economy could still grow about 4 percent.

"We are keeping the 4 percent GDP target," he said.

Official data released last week showed the economy grew 3.4 percent in the first quarter, year-on-year, down from 4.9 percent in the final quarter of 1999.

The government said annual inflation rose to 4.1 percent in May from 3.7 percent in April, in line with market expectations, but the worst result since 4.3 percent in December.