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.