U.S. troops will patrol in RP, but carefully
U.S. troops will patrol in RP, but carefully
Agencies, Zamboanga, Philippines
U.S. forces will patrol in the southern Philippines with local
troops fighting Moro guerrillas but only in areas with a low risk
of combat, a Philippine military spokesman said on Sunday.
The patrol areas -- part of joint training exercises due to
get underway on Jan. 30 -- will be carefully selected with the
aid of sophisticated U.S. intelligence systems, Major Noel
Detoyato told Reuters.
"We will see to it that the area where they will go to is
where the threat level is low, not where we think the enemy would
be," Detoyato said in an interview at the headquarters of the
southern Philippine military command.
"That's the condition," Detoyato said.
Philippine officials have given conflicting statements about
whether the U.S. troops will go out in the field as part of the
exercises.
The U.S. troops will be armed and allowed to fire in self-
defense and many critics have said that is highly unusual in any
training.
Critics have said the government is using the training to mask
a deployment of U.S. troops in a combat role, which would be
against the constitution.
Popular support for U.S. troops joining Filipino soldiers in
anti-terrorist military operations is overwhelming, with
communists the only dissenters, President Gloria Arroyo said on
Sunday.
"Our people support this wholeheartedly," Arroyo told Bombo
Radio here in an interview.
"Only a few people object to their presence, particularly the
communists."
Leftist groups have warned against escalating the U.S.
military presence to wage war on a 33-year old communist
insurgency.
Asked about the possibility that U.S. troops accompanying
local forces might be ambushed by the Abu Sayyaf guerrillas,
Detoyato said: "That's part of (being a soldier) but that element
is from zero to nil."
About 660 U.S. soldiers will take part in the training but
only about 120 to 160 members of the U.S. elite Special Forces
will actually go out with local soldiers into Basilan island,
where the Abu Sayyaf extremists have been holding a U.S.
missionary couple hostage for eight months.
The deployment of the U.S. forces on Basilan, a rugged island
of mountains, forests and steep ravines three times the size of
Singapore, marks the first significant military involvement of
the United States in the Philippines since the closure of the
last U.S. military base in the former U.S. colony in 1992, which
ended almost a century of U.S. military presence.