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.