SE Asia making headway against terror: U.S.

SE Asia making headway against terror: U.S.

Reuters, Manila

Southeast Asia is making headway against the threat of regional terror, backed by close cooperation and sharing of intelligence, the commander of U.S. forces in the Asia-Pacific said on Friday.

"We have made a great deal of progress on terrorism in Southeast Asia over the last 18 months," Admiral Thomas Fargo told a news conference, adding that about 140 members of the Muslim militant group Jamaah Islamiah had been arrested.

Washington says Jamaah Islamiyah (JI), which seeks a strict Islamic state across parts of Southeast Asia, has links to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network that is blamed for the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

"Certainly, the arrests that have been made in places like Singapore and Malaysia and Indonesia and other countries for that matter, including the Philippines, have been very important in diminishing the capability of Jamaah Islamiah," Fargo said.

"As a result of those arrests, we are gaining a bigger picture of the JI and their operational planning, their ability to conduct terrorist acts."

But Fargo cautioned that the threat had not been eliminated entirely.

"We haven't completely solved the problem with the JI and they do have the capability to conduct further attacks," he said.

Indonesian police have linked the group to bombings on the resort island of Bali in October that killed more than 200 people, mostly foreign tourists.

Fargo is on a three-day visit to the Philippines, a former U.S. colony and close ally of Washington, to discuss security issues with local officials.

U.S. and Philippine troops are due to hold a second round of joint exercises this year to help local units fight the Abu Sayyaf, a kidnap-for-ransom gang linked by Washington to al- Qaeda.