RP opposition warns U.S. of Muslim quagmire

RP opposition warns U.S. of Muslim quagmire

Reuters, Manila

The Philippines' top opposition leader warned the United States
on Thursday against involvement in combat with local Muslim
insurgents, saying this could unleash an Islamic backlash and
lead to his country's breakup.

"I am sure the Americans are smart enough to know that they
won't be sucked into that kind of turmoil but one can never
tell," Senator Edgardo Angara, head of the main opposition party
Laban, told Manila-based foreign correspondents.

"When policymakers 10,000 miles away in Washington see some
casualties among their people and when the fight is clothed in
anti-terrorist trappings, who knows? Even the Washington
policymakers may be entrapped into that kind of disastrous
situation," he said.

Angara recalled U.S. involvement in Vietnam started with a few
hundred advisers "and then it became a conflagration".

Hundreds of U.S. troops are training Filipinos in counter-
terrorism to help Manila defeat the Abu Sayyaf guerrillas. The
United States has linked the group to Saudi-born dissident Osama
bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network, prime suspects in the
September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

The Abu Sayyaf, which has been holding a U.S. missionary
couple hostage for almost 11 months on Basilan island, is a
breakaway faction of Muslim separatist rebels fighting for an
Islamic state on the main southern island of Mindanao and
adjacent areas.

Angara said the political opposition welcomed U.S. military
help in vanquishing the Abu Sayyaf, which he described as a
bandit group, but said American troops should avoid getting
involved with mainstream separatist groups.

"We will pay a high price if we entrap and engulf the
Americans into fighting our insurgency war," Angara said.

"The whole Arab world will go against us. Our own Muslims will
become even more fanatical and I think we will ultimately lose
Mindanao," he said.

Muslims make up only about four percent of the Roman Catholic
Philippines' 77 million people but most of them live in Mindanao.

Angara said the breakup could happen because the separatists
could win the sympathy of neighboring Islamic countries such as
Indonesia and Malaysia.

"If they see that their own brothers in Mindanao are now the
target of joint Philippines and American operations, that would
set off a big backlash among Muslims in that region," he warned.