Terror threats close Australia, Canada, EU missions in RP
Terror threats close Australia, Canada, EU missions in RP
Agencies, Manila
Australia, Canada and the European Union (EU) closed their
embassies in the Philippines on Thursday in response to specific
terrorist threats by religious extremists, but Philippine
officials and security experts said the fears were overblown.
Armed police secured the Australian embassy and the EU office,
both occupants of an office tower in the Makati financial
district of Manila, as well as the Canadian embassy three blocks
away.
Police SWAT teams armed with assault rifles patrolled the
streets of Makati, as Manila police chief Reynaldo Velasco said
he had ordered tighter security at all foreign embassies in the
city.
No other foreign embassies were known to have closed -- the
U.S. mission is closed for the Thanksgiving holiday but a
spokesmen said it would reopen on Friday. The British and New
Zealand missions were operating normally.
Australia has been on high alert since the Oct. 12 attacks on
the Indonesian resort island of Bali killed over 190 people,
nearly half of them Australians.
Private security guards are now on 24-hour patrol at the
Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, two landmarks in the
nation's most populous city, while garbage bins have been removed
from underground stations.
Thursday's alerts, just six weeks after the Bali bombings,
appeared to be confined to the Philippines. The largely Roman
Catholic country has itself been a target of attacks by militant
Moro groups.
"I would like to categorically state that there is no specific
threat against any embassy here in the Philippines," National
Security Adviser Roilo Golez told reporters. Despite Golez
seeking to downplay the closures, police said they inspected the
office building housing the Australian mission on Wednesday night
after a man called to say a bomb had been placed inside.
No explosives were found.
Police also said Australian security officers questioned a
Filipino man last week about why he was filming the building.
"I saw the intelligence warning and it couldn't have been more
explicit," Prime Minister John Howard told Australia Broadcasting
Corp. radio.
The bombings have been blamed on Jamaah Islamiah, a Southeast
Asian militant group linked to the al-Qaeda network that is
Washington's prime suspect in the attacks on the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001.
Australia advised its nationals to defer non-essential travel
to the Philippines, a move also made by Canada as it shut its
mission in Manila.
"We've had a specific and credible threat that required us to
temporarily close the embassy," Heather Forton, a spokeswoman for
Canada's High Commission, told Reuters without elaborating.
But a foreign risk consultant familiar with the details of the
alerts said they stemmed from a general briefing for several
diplomats by Philippine intelligence officers.
"This was never meant to be substantiated information, this
was meant as a sort of discussion with embassy people," he said.
"We think Canberra has overblown it, not the local embassy."
The consultant questioned why, if the risks were perceived to
be high, businesses in the tower blocks housing the two missions
had not been evacuated.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said Canberra had
received information from sources in the Philippines about a
planned attack by religious extremists in the next few days.
He said staff at the embassy had been temporarily relocated to
a nearby hotel to continue their consular work.
"The assessment of the Australians is that, after Bali, they
are being specifically targeted by al-Qaeda," a Philippine
security source told Reuters.
Philippine officials have said local Moro militants from
groups such as the Abu Sayyaf and the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front (MILF) participated in training with Jamaah Islamiah and
al-Qaeda members.
Jamaah Islamiah is also accused of funding bombings in Manila
by MILF members that killed more than 20 people in December 2000.