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EU fearful of JI threat in Mindanao
THE PRESENCE of the Al Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah in the Mindanao region will be "extremely damaging" not only to the Philippines but also to its standing in the international community, a visiting official from the European Union told lawmakers at the House of Representatives on Tuesday."The role of JI in Mindanao is extremely damaging. Damaging to the interest of other countries in the region, to the interest of the Philippines and to the standing of the Philippines in the international community," Gijs de Vries said at a briefing with the joint committees on foreign affairs and justice. "It's very important that JI will be denied its opportunities for training, which they currently still enjoy," he said. Vries, along with ambassadors Herber Jager and Jan de Kok, sought an audience with the committees deliberating on the anti-terror bill to find out its status, as well as the ongoing peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The diplomats specifically wanted to find out if the Muslim rebels had been giving sanctuary to JI in some parts of Mindanao. "The reason of course that us, as non-Filipinos, are interested in it not only because of its importance to the Philippines but also because of the regional responsibility of the Philippines," Vries said. He said they had "immediate security interests in terms of the physical security of our citizens in the region," because among those who died in the Bali and Marriot Hotel bombings in Indonesia were European citizens. But Datumanong, who came from Mindanao, said there was no trace or any indication of the JI's presence in the region although he did not discount the possibility that the group might have been in the region. "The so-called JI, which is suspected to come from a nearby neighbor probably was there before but there seems to be no trace of it or no showing of its presence today so is the so-called Al-Qaeda," he told in response to Vries query. The lawmaker also expressed doubts that the MILF had been giving sanctuary to the JI, citing the joint operations conducted by the Muslim rebels and the government in areas suspected to have JI presence. "The MILF had made practically a commitment to the government of the Philippines to sincerely help in preventing the JI and the Al-Qaeda to have sanctuary within the areas that the MILF have now occupied," he said. With the peace talks between the government and the MILF going on in Kuala Lumpur, Datumanong is confident that the two parties will have a peace agreement by the end of the year. He said he had talked to Al Haj Murad, chairman of the MILF panel, and got an assurance that they were determined to have a peace agreement similar to what the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the government had. "Not a peace agreement of particular understanding but the totality of bringing about peace," Datumanong pointed out. Posted by: Dan Darling 2006-02-07 |
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