Seabees land in Philippines
By Pauline Jelinek
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The number of American troops sent to the Philippines in the war against terrorism is rising to 1,200 with today's landing of Navy Seabees to build airstrips and carry out other construction projects.
Three-hundred forty of the Navy engineers and their Marine security force started going ashore on the southern Basilan island from the dock landing ship USS Germantown early this morning , only hours after their deployment was approved by the Philippine government.
The island is a base of the Abu Sayyaf rebels, who have been holding American missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham of Wichita, Kan., hostage for more than 10 months.
In remarks to reporters yesterday during a visit to Fort Lewis, Wash., Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said "we have no current plans to expand" the kind of work the U.S. military is doing in the Philippines to other countries in that region.
"They've requested, and we've agreed to provide, some joint training, where our forces are there working with them with respect to things like intelligence and logistics and communications and that type of thing," he said. "It'll have a beginning and an end."
Referring to the Navy Seabees' construction work, Rumsfeld said, "We're going to be doing that for a relatively brief period."
The Seabees join 160 U.S. Special Forces troops working with Philippine troops on Basilan to advise them as they battle the rebels; 440 U.S. trainers and other support people for those advisers, staying in nearby Zamboanga; and a rarely publicized 225 to 300 logistic, aviation and intelligence personnel on the central Philippines island of Mactan near Cebu City.
Under a $3.9 million mission previously approved at the Pentagon, the Seabees and Philippine military engineers will build roads, dig wells and improve a causeway in the Muslim-dominated southern island. The Philippine government has made development a top priority to allay some of the poverty that incubates extremist groups such as the Abu Sayyaf. "This has no relation with the military training. This is only a civic action," Philippine national security adviser Roilo Golez told reporters after it was approved.
Americans were stressing the other side of the coin. Although the infrastructure improvements will boost the local economy, U.S. officials said, they are being done not for that reason but rather to help American troops in their counterterror work on Basilan.
Associated Press writer Oliver Teves contributed to this report from Zamboanga City, Philippines.
