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Southeast Asia
Manila Finds Bomb Plot, Links Asian Group to Blast
2003-03-12
The Philippines said on Wednesday it uncovered a plan by Muslim rebels to stage reprisal attacks if the United States invades Iraq and suggested a radical Southeast Asian group may be linked to a deadly blast last week. Eight days after 21 people were killed in the southern city of Davao, police said they arrested a man carrying two grenades and a mobile phone with numbers of extremists suspected of hatching a "diabolical plot to sow terror" in Manila. The little-known Raja Solaiman Movement planned bombings "in case the United States and its allies attack Iraq" and to support the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), said Reynaldo Velasco, head of Philippine National Police operations in the capital.
The Raja Solaiman Movement is a new one on me, and on Google. A minigroup, put together for the occasion?
Jemaah Islamiah may have had a hand in the Davao blast, security officials said. "That seems to be the developing assessment," National Bureau of Investigation director Reynaldo Wycoco told reporters. He said there were similarities between the Davao attack and the bombings in Manila that led to the jailing of self-confessed Jemaah Islamiah member Fathur al-Ghozi last year. The Indonesian told Philippine investigators he was helped by MILF rebels. "The modus operandi is the same," Wycoco said.
They're all independent contractors, but they're keen to extend those little professional courtesies...
The army said five soldiers and more than 100 MILF guerrillas had been killed, mostly by howitzer fire and rockets launched by helicopter gunships, over the past two days as the rebels tried to recapture a key stronghold in the town of Pikit. "They kept on advancing like they would not be hit by bullets," military spokesman Major Julieto Ando told Reuters.
US troops saw the same thing when we first occupied the Philipines and fought muslim rebels. That's when we issued the .45 ACP to replace the 38.
The government said on Monday it was offering "the hand of peace" to rebels who renounce violence. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo dispatched former Foreign Minister Roberto Romulo to Malaysia on Wednesday to seek its help in persuading the MILF to resume stalled peace talks. Malaysia is brokering the negotiations but the MILF wants troops out of its base in Pikit before it will talk to Manila.
How about we kill you instead?
"I am calling on the MILF to take clear and specific moves to step out of the boundaries of terrorism," Arroyo told reporters. U.S. troops are now training Philippine units in the jungles near the southern city of Zamboanga and are due to start another series of counter-terrorism exercises soon. The communist New People's Army said on Tuesday U.S. soldiers would be "legitimate targets" if the new exercises were held near its strongholds and that it had forged an alliance with the MILF for mutual support but not joint attacks.
Posted by:Steve

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