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Philippines insurgents { November 21 2001 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61478-2001Nov20http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A61478-2001Nov20
U.S. to Aid Philippines' Terrorism War
Bush Promises Military Equipment, Help in Freezing Insurgents' Assets
By Steven Mufson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, November 21, 2001; Page A03
The Bush administration told Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo yesterday that the United States would give her government $92.3 million in military equipment to bolster its ability to combat terrorists and insurgents.
In addition, U.S. officials told Arroyo that President Bush would revise his recent executive order freezing the assets of terrorist groups to add the New Peoples Army, a communist group that is the largest insurgency in the Philippines. Bush might also add some Muslim groups that have splintered from the Abu Sayyaf organization that is also battling Philippine government forces. Abu Sayyaf is already on the U.S. terrorist list.
The new military equipment will include a C-130 transport plane, eight Huey helicopters, a naval patrol boat and 30,000 M-16 rifles plus ammunition, Philippine government sources said. Arroyo said in an interview yesterday that her forces also needed equipment for fighting at night.
The assistance is part of a broad program of military cooperation between the United States and the Philippines, whose leaders yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of a mutual defense treaty. The United States already provides military advisers to assist the Philippine military in anti-terrorist training and strategy, and the Philippines has offered its bases, airspace and law enforcement abilities to help the U.S. war on terrorism.
In separate meetings yesterday with Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Arroyo said her country needs continued assistance in the form of military equipment, U.S. military advisers and additional U.S. measures to disrupt the financial networks of terrorist groups operating in the Philippines.
Bush indicated he was ready to help. "I have asked her point-blank, what help does she need," Bush said during an Oval Office photo session with Arroyo. "She's confident that her military can deal with Abu Sayyaf . . . and we want to help her military deal with them."
Arroyo also asked for economic benefits that would help win the "hearts and minds" of Filipinos. She wants the United States to further open U.S. markets to Filipino canned tuna and tropical fruit exports -- including bananas, mangoes and pineapples -- and to make the textile quota more flexible to better suit the Filipino textile industry's products.
"While evil is the cause of terrorism, not poverty, evil can spread its message where people are poor," Arroyo said in the interview with Washington Post editors and reporters. She said U.S. military assistance could help free Philippine government resources for economic development that would ultimately aid the fight against terrorism.
"There are a number of kinds of assistance that would be very helpful in making our fight more effective," she said. "When you're fighting terrorism, you're drawing resources away from fighting poverty."
Arroyo attended an investment forum last night. The United States, she noted, is "our number one trading partner [and] cumulatively our number one source of investment."
Arroyo, who became president after her predecessor was swept from office in a bribery scandal, was in Washington to mark the anniversary of the mutual defense pact that her father, former president Diosdado Macapagal, signed. But in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, her visit was dominated by the war on terrorism.
The Philippine government faces several violent groups.
Arroyo said that Abu Sayyaf guerrillas had suffered heavy casualties in stepped-up fighting with government troops since Sept. 11, and she estimated that their numbers had dwindled to a few hundred.
Abu Sayyaf is the smallest and most radical of the Islamic separatist groups operating in the southern Philippines. Its late leader, killed by Philippine police in 1998, was a veteran of earlier wars in Afghanistan. The group's name means "bearer of the sword."
The group has been linked in the past to al Qaeda, and the Philippines provided evidence in the trial of suspects in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. But Arroyo said that, since 1995, Philippine authorities had not uncovered any further al Qaeda activities.
Separate fighting flared Monday as hundreds of former rebels of the Moro National Liberation Front launched an armed uprising on a southern Philippine island, reneging on a 1996 peace deal.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
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