Terror war talks come to Hawai'i
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post
MANILA, Philippines — The Philippine defense secretary and the commander of U.S. Pacific Command will meet today in Honolulu to begin to flesh out a plan to send U.S. forces to the southern Philippines, officials here said yesterday.
The discussions between Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes and Adm. Thomas Fargo may help clarify the terms of the plan and help subdue controversy over whether U.S. forces will serve in a combat or training role in a joint effort to wipe out the Muslim guerrilla group Abu Sayyaf, officials said.
"I don't know if (Reyes) can come up with final terms, but at least they will have started talking about the substantive portion of the plans," a Philippine military official said.
Reyes later will fly to Washington for talks with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials to discuss counterterrorism and other issues.
A Pentagon official said last week that U.S. forces will "actively participate" in combat operations with Philippine soldiers. Philippine officials have insisted that U.S. troops will serve only as trainers.
The distinction between training and combat roles is an important issue in the Philippines. Last year during a similar debate over U.S. troops in the southern Philippines, the country's Supreme Court ruled that a joint counterterrorism exercise was legal. But the court emphasized that U.S. troops were prohibited by law from engaging in combat during the operation, called Balikatan — which means "shoulder to shoulder."
This year, at the Philippine government's request, Pentagon planners designed a program to counter Abu Sayyaf that would put U.S. troops on the front lines. On Feb. 4, U.S. officials presented their proposal to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and senior Philippine government officials. The plan was drafted in terms that sought to avoid the controversy of last year's exercise, a U.S. official said.
"What would be new was we would be willing to go down to the front-line level, where our troops would be in harm's way," the official said. "Everybody understood that we were talking about an operation in dangerous circumstances, but it was a Philippine armed forces-led, United States-assisted operation against Abu Sayyaf group. That was the key line."
An agreement "in principle" emerged from a meeting at the presidential palace, Philippine officials said.
Asked yesterday during a radio interview what the Philippine government would do if the United States requested a combat role, Arroyo's spokesman, Ignacio Bunye, said the government would reject it.
"That is, as of now, hypothetical, but if they would request that, we would not allow that because that's against the constitution," he said.
Meanwhile yesterday, Lt. Gen. Narciso Abaya, chief of the Philippine armed forces Southern Command, told reporters "big numbers of U.S. soldiers" would arrive in Zamboanga City in the next few weeks. The soldiers, he said, will later be sent to Jolo island, site of the most intense Abu Sayyaf activity.
Abu Sayyaf has fought for a decade to establish an Islamic state in the southern part of the Philippines, a predominantly Roman Catholic country. The group has used kidnapping, extortion and assassination toward that goal. The State Department designated the group a terrorist organization in 1997, and U.S. officials have alleged it is loosely linked to al-Qaida.
