RP's NPA and MILF agree to help each other
RP's NPA and MILF agree to help each other
Agencies, Manila
The Philippines' two biggest rebel groups have agreed to help each other fight the government but have not combined their forces for joint attacks, a senior rebel leader said on Monday.
Communist spokesman Gregorio Rosal, in a radio interview, also warned that U.S. troops would be "legitimate targets" if they moved into strongholds of the leftist New People's Army (NPA) while training Philippine soldiers in counter-terrorism.
The NPA, which is fighting for a Marxist state, and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the country's biggest Muslim separatist group, each have about 12,000 fighters.
The United States has blacklisted the Marxist group as a terrorist organization.
Rosal said the NPA and the MILF had not reached the stage of coordinated attacks but they were cooperating in training and in protecting each other's fighters if attacked.
"The field commanders also work with each other. If one is on the retreat then the other shelters him," he said on Radio Veritas, a station run by the Roman Catholic church.
"I don't know of any discussions to hold joint operations. That is a little difficult. That is still in the planning stage."
Some officials have suggested a bombing on March 4 that killed 21 people in the southern city of Davao might have been a joint operation by the groups.
The Philippines military has in the past accused the two groups of working together but this is the first confirmation of cooperation from a senior rebel official.
The communist rebels operate in small pockets all over the Philippines including in the south, where the MILF is one of a range of Muslim rebel groups fighting for autonomy.
Meanwhile, Philippine President Gloria Arroyo is to seek Malaysia's help to bring Filipino Muslim separatists to the negotiating table and end escalating violence in the southern Philippines, sources said on Tuesday.
"The president will dispatch a special envoy tomorrow to meet with the acting Malaysian prime minister in a new bid to help end this bloodshed," a highly-placed source told AFP.
Presidential envoy Roberto Romulo is scheduled to hold talks with acting Malaysian premier Abdullah Badawi in Kuala Lumpur Wednesday, the source said, adding that Manila wanted Malaysia to "play a more active role" in the peace process instead of being a mere "facilitator."
In another development, the United States has expressed concern that Iraqi militants in the Philippines could attack U.S. interests here if Washington moves to oust Saddam Hussein, Philippine Foreign Secretary Blas Ople said on Tuesday.
"They have expressed some anxiety about the Iraqi residents in the Philippines. And they're concerned that some of these Iraqis will try to harm U.S. government interests in the country," Ople told reporters.