Two Iraqi diplomats expelled from Manila for espionage

Two Iraqi diplomats expelled from Manila for espionage

Agencies, Manila

The Philippines on Monday ordered the expulsion of two high- ranking Iraqi Embassy staffers following a U.S. request for countries to expel Baghdad's diplomats.

Foreign Secretary Blas Ople said he summoned Iraqi Charge d'Affaires Samir Bolus to inform him that First Secretary Abdul Karim Shwaikh and an attache, Karim Nassir Hamid, had to leave the country within 72 hours.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said the two will be expelled because of "evidence of espionage." She said the Iraqi Embassy in Manila will not be closed and Iraqi diplomats will be dealt with case by case.

"We are only expelling those with some evidence of espionage," she said.

Ople said the two Iraqis were taking photographs of the American Cemetery in Manila on the eve of a memorial service last November. The U.S. Embassy canceled the event at the last minute, citing a terrorist threat.

Ople said when the diplomats saw they were being followed by Philippine police, they changed taxis several times to escape surveillance.

Last month, Philippine officials expelled an Iraqi consul, Husham Husain, over suspicion of links with Filipino Muslim extremists.

Manila said Husain was ordered out after intelligence officers traced mobile phone calls from Abu Sayyaf rebels to the diplomat immediately after a blast in October killed a U.S. soldier and three Filipinos at a karaoke bar in Zamboanga City.

The Iraqi embassy denied Husain was involved with Abu Sayyaf, a Philippine Muslim kidnap gang blacklisted by the United States as a terrorist organization with links to Osama bin Laden's al- Qaeda network.

The Bureau of Immigration said the 11 men were arrested last week on the main island of Luzon and on Mindanao, the scene of decades of violence by several rebel groups seeking an Islamic homeland in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic country.

One of the Iraqis was implicated in the 1989 kidnapping of a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, it said.

Senior police sources said the Saudi was a suspect in the 1991 bombing of a library in central Manila run by the U.S. embassy, and was also being questioned about links to a suspected Indonesian militant.

The Philippines, one of Washington's staunchest Asian allies in the global war on terrorism, has increasingly been sensitive to possible security threats, especially after it joined last week the "coalition of the willing" backing Washington's military action against Iraq.

Arroyo defended the move as more lenient compared with other countries. She noted that Jordan, "which is a neighbor of Iraq and is supposed to be a friend of Iraq, already expelled its five diplomats, so we are in fact bending backward in a show of friendship to the people of Iraq."

The Iraqi Embassy in Manila has seven accredited diplomats. The ambassador-designate, Ghazi Faissal Hussein, still hasn't presented his credentials.

Elsewhere in the region, Thailand has expelled three low- ranking Iraqi diplomats, while majority Muslim Malaysia and Indonesia have said they will not comply with the U.S. request.

Last week, Immigration Commissioner Andrea Domingo announced 11 Iraqis have been arrested in an anti-terrorist sweep and deportation proceedings were underway. Domingo said the Iraqis have been monitored for terrorist activities for some time and claimed they were part of an "established network" linked to Husain, the expelled Iraqi consul.