U.S. Embassy in Manila may also have been target

U.S. Embassy in Manila may also have been target

MANILA (Agencies): Militants may have planned to bomb the U.S. Embassy in Manila simultaneously with the terror attacks in New York and Washington earlier this week, Philippine officials said on Friday.

Three men, all nationals from Oman, were taken in for questioning in the city last Saturday after they were found video-taping the sprawling U.S. Embassy, which occupies a large area fronting Manila Bay, police intelligence director Robert Delfin told Reuters.

There was no evidence to hold them further, and the three left for Thailand on Sunday, Delfin said. But after the U.S. attacks on Tuesday, police searched their room at the Bay View Hotel, which is opposite the embassy, and found residue of bomb-making material.

They were released after police checked their tapes which yielded "standard tourist scenes." The three checked out on Sept. 9 and left the following day for Bangkok, Tiglao said.

"The initial feeling is they may have planned to attack the embassy before Sept. 11 or on Sept. 11," presidential palace spokesman Rigoberto Tiglao told Reuters.

That was the day hijacked planes careened into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, killing hundreds and leaving thousands more missing. U.S. officials have said the hijackers were probably men of Middle East origin and that Saudi-born exile Osama bin Laden was a key suspect.

The name of one of the three men questioned in Manila also appeared on the manifest of one of the American Airlines planes hijacked in the United States, but it could be a common Arab name, Tiglao added.

"Police investigators are working closely with U.S. authorities in determining whether there is any link between the activities of the three Omanis here and the attacks in the United States," a government statement said.

In another development, a pilot for Saudi Arabian Airlines was taken in for questioning when he checked in at Manila airport to fly a scheduled flight to Riyadh on Friday afternoon, immigration officials said.

They said the man was apparently the brother of a suspect detained in the United States.

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was quoted as saying in Tokyo on Thursday there might be a connection between those who planned and carried out the acts of terror against the United States and Abu Sayyaf guerrillas in the Philippines.

"It is better to wait for the investigation, but there are some traces of a relationship, and some angles we are looking at," Arroyo was quoted in Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper as telling journalists in Tokyo during a four-day official visit.

Osama, who is based in Afghanistan, has been on the Philippine watch-list for years, suspected of funding the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Abu Sayyaf guerrillas.

Both groups profess to fight for a separate state but the Abu Sayyaf, holding a U.S. missionary couple and 16 Filipinos hostage for 15 weeks on Basilan island, is seen largely as a bandit group whose main business is kidnap for ransom.

The Philippine military earlier this year also accused Osama's group of giving financial aid to the Abu Sayyaf to carry out attacks on U.S. interests in the Philippines and to assassinate Arroyo.

The military never presented evidence to back up its claim.

But the Abu Sayyaf has several times demanded the release of militants convicted in the 1993 plot to blow up the World Trade Center in exchange for freeing its hostages.