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 Support The DrudgeReport; Visit Our Advertisers  US Reverses Plans To Deploy Troops To Philippines Mon Mar 03 2003 10:12:20 ET After more than a week of often impassioned protests in the Philippines, the U.S. backed off plans to send troops to chase down the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group in the southern Philippines, the WALL STREET JOURNAL reported on Monday. Pentagon officials on Feb. 20 said 1,750 U.S. Marines and Special Operations troops would fly to the Philippines to take part in a joint operation with Philippine soldiers against the Abu Sayyaf, which despite its small size has earned a grisly reputation for both its loose ties to al Qaeda and its habit of executing hostages. But that plan sparked broad dissent in the Philippines, where despite the country's support for America's war on terrorism, memories of U.S. colonial rule still jar. The Philippine Constitution, meanwhile, prohibits foreign troops from fighting on Philippine soil, forcing the Pentagon to make an embarrassing revision of its plans. 'We have to find an approach that will help them without violating their constitution,' U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at a news conference Friday after meeting Philippine Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes in Washington. Both men said the two governments still are negotiating how they can cooperate against the Abu Sayyaf, which Philippine military officials say has been reduced to just a few hundred fighters bunkered on the remote island of Jolo. Mr. Rumsfeld said the U.S. would most likely provide training and intelligence support to Philippines soldiers, as it did for several months last year in an earlier mission against Islamic militants. In Manila, meanwhile, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's spokesman, Ignacio Bunye, reiterated statements, first made shortly after Pentagon officials said the troops were coming to fight the terrorists, that there would be no combat role for U.S. troops in the Philippines. 'This will have to be within the framework of the constitution and our interpretation of that is no foreign combat troops,' Mr. Bunye told the Associated Press Saturday. Developing... |
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