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Afghans sweep for guns as U.S. hunts attack suspects
By John Fullerton and Anton Ferreira
Friday January 18, 3:51 PM
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Afghan police fanned out in southern Kandahar on Friday to confiscate weapons from armed groups as the United States issued a global appeal to find five al Qaeda men it said could be plotting suicide attacks.
The United States assured the new Afghan interim government of its long-term support for desperately needed reconstruction even as its hunt for members of Osama bin Laden's spread deeper into countries beyond Afghanistan.
Police from Britain to the Philippines moved against terror suspects believed linked to bin Laden's radical network blamed for the September 11 attacks on the United States that killed about 3,100 people.
An inspection team from the International Committee of the Red Cross headed for the U.S. internment camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amid concern among rights groups about the conditions in which captives from the war in Afghanistan are being held.
Fearing that tankers or freighters could be turned into floating weapons and sailed into the hearts of port cities, the U.S. Coast Guard called for stringent new security measures for world shipping.
The head of the U.S. Customs Service issued a warning that groups such as al Qaeda might try to launch such an attack with a nuclear bomb hidden in a shipping container.
The operation against illegal guns in Kandahar was launched at 6 a.m. (0130 GMT), shortly after the nightly curfew ended, and within hours bursts of machinegun fire could be heard from the northeast sector of the city.
In one incident, a Reuters correspondent saw two policemen open fire with Kalashnikov rifles at a taxi that refused to stop at their checkpoint. About five rounds were fired, smashing the rear window of the vehicle. The taxi was brought to a halt at the next checkpost, and no one was hurt.
Afghanistan is awash with firearms after 23 years of war and there are fears that lawlessness could derail efforts by the new government to begin reconstruction.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell -- the highest ranking U.S. visitor in 25 years -- made a brief stop in Kabul on Thursday, meeting interim leader Hamid Karzai and pledging a major contribution to a reconstruction fund to be launched at a donors' conference in Tokyo early next week.
"We are committed to doing everything we can to assist you in this time of transition to a new Afghanistan… where people will be able to live in peace and security," Powell said.
Powell, in the region to try to defuse tensions between nuclear powers Pakistan and India, spent just a few hours in Kabul where the Taliban ruled until their defeat less than two months ago at the hands of the U.S. military and Afghan rivals.
"NO CONTAMINATION"
The United States launched waves of air strikes against Afghanistan on October 7 to crush the Taliban and the al Qaeda network that found a haven in the country under the rule of the hardline Islamic movement.
Powell said U.S. security forces were still scouring Afghanistan to purge any Taliban or al Qaeda "contamination".
An Australian special forces member was wounded in a mine blast while on patrol near Kandahar, Australian defence officials said. He is the first Australian to be wounded since the country joined the U.S.-led operation.
In Washington, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft released videos and photographs of what he called five would-be "suicide terrorists" and appealed to the public around the world to be on the lookout for them.
"Analysis of the audio portion of these tapes conducted thus far suggests… that the men may be trained and prepared to commit future suicide terrorist acts," Ashcroft told a news conference.
He said the material was found in the house of Muhammad Atef, the military strategist of bin Laden's al Qaeda and a right-hand man who the United States says was killed in November by the air strikes.
Red Cross representatives left Florida for the U.S. navy base in Guantanamo Bay to inspect the prison camp where Taliban and al Qaeda captives are being held.
The treatment of the prisoners, who are temporarily being held in 6-foot-by-8-foot (2-metre-by-2.6-metre) cells with roofs and floors but only chain-link walls, has raised concerns among human rights groups.
The United States denies the men are entitled to be classified as prisoners of war, which would grant them certain rights under the Geneva Convention.
But U.S. officials gave permission for the four-member team from the ICRC to visit. The team was to arrive in Guantanamo late on Thursday and stay at least one night.
"They will find what happens to be true -- that these people are being treated very humanely," Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke told reporters in Washington.
LEGAL STATUS OF CAPTIVES
U.N. human rights chief Mary Robinson, in remarks backed by Secretary General Kofi Annan, said it was extremely important that the prisoners were treated according to international human rights and humanitarian law.
In the central England town of Leicester, two Algerian men were charged with membership in al Qaeda and "financing terrorism".
Baghdad Meziane, 36, and Brahim Benmerzouga, 30, were arrested two weeks after the September attacks as part of a pan-European investigation.
A Bosnian court ordered the release of five Algerians and a Yemeni detained in October on suspicion of involvement in international terrorism, but the Pentagon immediately said U.S. troops in Bosnia would take the six into custody.
A total of nine people suspected of al Qaeda links were arrested on Thursday in Pakistan and the Philippines. Police in Manila said they had also seized a ton of explosives.
In the most significant military move against terrorism since the Afghanistan campaign, U.S. soldiers set up camp on an island in the southern Philippines where they will help local forces fight Muslim rebels linked to bin Laden.
The deployment, which will total about 650 troops described as non-combat personnel, sparked a chorus of protests in Manila. Government critics said President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo could be impeached for allowing in foreign soldiers.
Friday January 18, 2:25 PM
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan approved $49 million in emergency humanitarian aid for Afghanistan on Friday and the government promised that it would provide the support necessary to help rebuild the war-ravaged country.
Government sources have said Japan could eventually provide as much as $500 million, about one-tenth of the estimated short-term cost of rebuilding Afghanistan.
The initial contribution fulfils part of Japan's promise in October to donate up to $120 million in emergency aid for Afghan refugees, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told a news conference after a Cabinet meeting.
The Cabinet approved 6.47 billion yen ($48.84 million) in emergency aid, including financial help for Kabul's interim government.
Japan also reiterated its pledge to help rebuild Afghanistan's tattered economy and society over the next two-and-a-half years.
"Our government plans to provide appropriate support for the stability and reconstruction of Afghanistan," Fukuda said.
The government is due to put a figure on Japan's assistance at an Afghan donors' conference beginning on Monday in Tokyo.
RECONSTRUCTION PLEDGE
The planned support comes at a delicate time for Japan, which was the world's biggest aid donor for 10 years until 2000 but is now holding down public spending as it tries to cut government debt totalling over 130 percent of gross domestic product.
Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka said that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi would decide the extent of its support, taking into account both the needs of Afghanistan and Japan's "severe" economic situation.
Besides determining the size of its contribution, Japan needs to decide its priorities for Afghan aid, Tanaka said.
"In all areas including infrastructure and governance, it will be like starting from scratch," she said, adding that the removal of landmines, improving education and providing aid for women and children were also important.
EMERGENCY AID
The emergency aid announced on Friday consists mainly of contributions to U.N. agencies, including 1.97 billion yen for the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 1.67 billion yen for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and 1.56 billion yen for the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF).
The funds would be disbursed after coordinating with relevant agencies, which usually takes two to three weeks, a Foreign Ministry official said.
Japan would also provide about 110 million yen ($830,000) for Afghanistan's interim government, which the U.N. said on Monday needed $100 million immediately just to start working.
The Cabinet also approved financial assistance for countries neighbouring Afghanistan, namely 5.0 billion yen in grant aid to Pakistan, 1.0 billion yen in grant aid to Uzbekistan and 1.0 billion yen in grants for Tajikistan
Friday January 18, 2:31 PM
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Success has many friends, failure none. Mullah Mohammad Omar, Afghanistan's foremost fugitive, is no exception.
Warlords who armed and funded him in his rise to power hardly know him, and apparently never did. Senior clerics now scorn him for poor manners, clumsy liturgy and overweening pride.
The businessman popularly believed to be one of his fathers-in-law flatly denies having given a daughter in marriage to the enigmatic conqueror, preacher and leader of the austere Taliban. It's all propaganda by his enemies in the money market, the businessman insists.
Even Mullah Omar's head gardener makes fun of him, saying the black-clad mullah preferred onions to flowers.
Of course, no-one knows where he is.
Not only that, but his uncle and step-father, his brothers-in-law, his four wives, his several children have all vanished, and no-one knows where they are. Or wants to know.
"I planted flowers and kept the lawns trim at his house in the city and at his new home," said head gardener Abdul Hamid.
"One day, he asked me in his deep rough voice, 'What are all these for?' The next day I found he had pulled the plants out and planted vegetables.
"A little while later I found him pulling green onions out and eating them with pieces of bread," 67-year-old Hamid told Reuters on Thursday. He mimicked the former Taliban leader, speaking in a rough voice.
The October night before Mullah Omar's two homes were attacked by U.S. cruise missiles and bombers, he fled to Arghandab, about 150 km (93 miles) northeast of Kandahar, with his family, Hamid added.
"I was told by his uncle and stepfather, Haji Akkar, that they left in a rush, and then moved to a place called Derawat. Mullah Omar came back to Kandahar, and I saw him riding on the back of a Jawa motorcycle through the streets.
"He carried a Kalashnikov rifle, but apart from the motorcyclist, he was otherwise alone."
Hamid said Omar had moved around the city, staying in different places from one night to the next. The last time he saw Mullah Omar, Hamid asked for wages he said he had been promised.
"'What?', he said to me, 'You dare ask for money? Don't you see the state we're in now?'"
"PROPAGANDA"
In downtown Kandahar, sitting on a mat outside a mosque and drinking a glass of hot milk, Haji Lalaq smiled broadly when he was asked about his connections with Mullah Omar.
"It's propaganda put out by my business rivals," the ex-money-changer said in an interview on Thursday. "It's simply not true. I am not one of Mullah Omar's fathers-in-law."
Lalaq said he had been a Kandahar money-changer. He speculated heavily in afghanis and Iraqi dinars.
When both currencies fell sharply, he lost 30 million Pakistani rupees (about $500,000) and owed a similar amount to his creditors. He was wiped out.
Many rumours circulate about Haji Lalaq -- that his business interests in the Gulf were of a questionable nature, forcing him to return to Afghanistan, that he cemented his business ties through a daughter's marriage to Mullah Omar, and that a second fortune evaporated in the wake of the Taliban's fall.
"It's all lies," he said.
SACRED CLOAK
In a central Kandahar park, the guardian of the cloak of the Prophet Mohammed distanced himself from the former Taliban leader, criticising his conduct in handling the sacred relic to exploit it to enhance his own reputation.
The cloak, which legend says is made from the wool from the lamb sacrificed by Abraham, was brought to Kandahar by King Ahmad Shah Durrani, and it lies in an ornate shrine, one of the architectural gems of Islamic civilisation.
Imam Kari Haji Abdul Bari said only heads of state had the right to touch the cloak. Mullah Omar was effectively head of state at the time, and host to Saudi-born Osama bin Laden, chief suspect in the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
"I couldn't do anything when Mullah Omar sent someone to take it from the shrine, but I didn't like it. I didn't approve of the way he handled something so sacred. He wasn't supposed to do that, holding it up like that."
Bari also criticised the way Omar insisted on leading prayers at the mosque, saying he lost his place and forgot his lines.
Mullah Naqibullah, at one time a powerful warlord widely believed to have helped arm and fund the Taliban's conquest of Afghanistan, said Mullah Omar was incoherent in his speech -- hastening to add that he had only met the Taliban leader two or three times during the movement's six-year reign.
He said he never dreamt Mullah Omar had the necessary qualities to conquer the entire country.
"If you'd suggested to me then that Mullah Omar would conquer the whole country, I would have deemed it impossible," Naqibullah said. "He just didn't seem capable of it."
Both Mullah Omar and bin Laden share the distinction of heading Washington's most wanted list, and the United States has vowed to track them both down.
There is no sign of either in Kandahar.
Mullah Omar's two homes are piles of rubble, his only legacy other than two grandiose, half-built mosques.
In what was his compound to the west of the city, in the foothills, gunmen in sunglasses and drab fatigues have made their camp, apparently working for U.S. special forces.
Police guard the wreck of his downtown home.
There are no statues of Omar or bin Laden. There are no portraits on public buildings. There are no tee-shirts, no posters, headbands or graffiti. It is as if neither man had ever existed.
Chuck Norris blasts terrorists in timely pic
Friday January 18, 5:12 PM
The President's Man: A Line in the Sand (Sun. (20), 9-11 p.m., CBS)
By Steven Oxman
HOLLYWOOD (Variety) - It turns out Chuck Norris isn'tjust a television star but a psychic: This CBS TV movie depicting an attempted terrorist attack on the U.S. by a Saudi national based in Afghanistan was filmed in May.
Of course, in this version, Norris and his secretive can-do team stop the nuclear bomb that's been smuggled into the country from exploding with a lone second left on the clock. Then he gives Osama -- or rather, Rashid, which is what the not-really-disguised Osama Bin Laden is called here -- a good ol' whuppin'.
Sorry to give away the ending, but it's the only way to do full justice to this alternate reality television, where good guys always win because machine guns always miss them. Norrisland has never seemed so unreal, or so appealing.
The picture is actually a sequel to a film that aired in 2000. In that one, Joshua McCord (Norris) decided it was time to retire as the ``President's Man,'' called on to do quietly what others can't, and he recruited a young, buff replacement named Deke Slater -- played here by soap star Judson Mills, who replaces another soap star from the first pic. The third member of the team is Joshua's half-Vietnamese daughter Que (Jennifer Tung), who spars verbally and (in training) physically with Deke.
In the screenplay by John Lansing and Bruce Cervi, the president (here played by Robert Urich) is publicly threatened by the leader of a terrorist group, the one responsible for the African embassy assault, the USS Cole attack, and the first (alas) World Trade Center bombing (who could they possibly be referring to?). If the U.S. doesn't release the men who've been tried for that latter event, Rashid will explode the nuclear bomb his son has smuggled into the country.
Only Joshua and his team can capture Rashid and then stop the bomb from destroying an American city. That premise, of course, also means that others can't do it, and in this case that refers to the White House staff, the U.S. military, the FBI and all other elements of the government, which come off as ineffective, if not incompetent. This may not be intentional, but it certainly is a disheartening portrait if one thinks about it.
Thinking about it isn't really what a Chuck Norris movie is there for, of course -- it's escapist entertainment that makes no apologies for its bad acting, reliance on explosions and general cheesy cheeriness. Because it comes a bit too close to reality, ``The President's Man: A Line in the Sand'' seems both more comic and more serious than others of its ilk.
Joshua McCord ............ Chuck Norris
Deke Slater .............. Judson Mills
Que ...................... Jennifer Tung
President Adam Mayfield .. Robert Urich
Jack Stanton ............. Philip Casnoff
With: Roxanne Hart, Joel Swetow, Alex Dodd, Thom Barry, Bruce Nozick, Maz Jobrani, Kay Bailey Hutchison.
Filmed in Texas by Washo Brothers Entertainment in association with Norris Brothers Entertainment. Executive producers, Chuck Norris, Aaron Norris; co-executive producer, Garry A. Brown; supervising producer, Leslie Stout Glennon; co-producer, Mike Elias; director, Eric Norris; writers, John Lansing, Bruce Cervi; cinematography, Rick Anderson; production design, Phil Leonard; editor, David Latham; music, Kevin Kiner; sound, Darrell Henke; casting, Shana Landsburg, Liz Keigley, Sari E. Keigley.
U.S. assures Afghanistan of long-term support
Friday January 18, 1:33 PM
WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) - The United States assured Afghanistan of its long-term support for post-Taliban reconstruction on Thursday and issued a global appeal to find five al Qaeda men who it said could be plotting further suicide attacks.
From Britain to the Philippines, police acted against terror suspects believed to be linked to Osama bin Laden's radical Muslim network, which is blamed for the September 11 attacks on America that killed about 3,100 people.
An inspection team from the International Committee of the Red Cross headed for the U.S. internment camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amid concern among rights groups about the conditions in which captives from the war in Afghanistan are being held.
Fearing that tankers or freighters could be turned into floating weapons and sailed into the hearts of port cities, the U.S. Coast Guard called for stringent new security measures for world shipping.
The head of the U.S. Customs Service issued a warning that groups like al Qaeda might try to launch such an attack with a nuclear bomb hidden in a shipping container.
U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell -- the highest ranking U.S. visitor in 25 years -- made a brief stop in Kabul, meeting interim Afghan ruler Hamid Karzai and pledging a major contribution to a reconstruction fund to be launched at a donors' conference in Tokyo early next week.
"We are committed to doing everything we can to assist you in this time of transition to a new Afghanistan, an Afghanistan where people will be able to live in peace and security," Powell said.
Powell, in the region to try to defuse tensions between nuclear powers Pakistan and India, spent just a few hours in Kabul where the Taliban ruled until their defeat less than two months ago at the hands of the U.S. military and local Afghan rivals.
U.S. WILL LEAVE NO "CONTAMINATION"
The United States launched waves of air strikes against Afghanistan on October 7 to crush the Taliban and the al Qaeda network which found a safe haven in the country under the rule of the hard-line Islamic movement.
Powell said U.S. security forces were still scouring Afghanistan to purge any Taliban or al Qaeda "contamination."
In Washington, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft released videos and photographs of what he called five would-be "suicide terrorists" and appealed to the public around the world to be on the lookout for them.
"Analysis of the audio portion of these tapes conducted thus far suggests ... that the men may be trained and prepared to commit future suicide terrorist acts," Ashcroft told a news conference.
He said the material was found in the house of Muhammad Atef, a top al Qaeda official who the United States says was killed in November by the air strikes.
Red Cross representatives left Florida for the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay to inspect the prison camp where Taliban and al Qaeda captives are being held.
The treatment of the prisoners, who are temporarily being held in 6-foot-by-8-foot (2-metre-by-2.6-metre) cells with roofs and floors but only chain-link walls, has raised concerns among human rights groups.
The United States denies the men are entitled to be classified as prisoners of war, which would grant them certain rights under the Geneva Convention on the treatment of detainees.
But U.S. officials gave permission for the four-member team from the ICRC to visit. The team was to arrive in Guantanamo late on Thursday and stay at least one night.
"They will find what happens to be true -- that these people are being treated very humanely," Pentagon spokeswoman Victoria Clarke told reporters in Washington.
"They are being given good, appropriate food three times a day. They are being given medical treatment. They are being given exercise and showers. They are being given the opportunity to pray if they want to."
LEGAL STATUS OF CAPTIVES
U.N. human rights chief Mary Robinson, in remarks backed by Secretary General Kofi Annan, said it was extremely important that the prisoners were treated according to international human rights and humanitarian law.
"It's extremely important that the legal status of those detained in Guantanamo Bay is clarified," Robinson said.
In the central England town of Leicester, two Algerian men were charged with membership of al Qaeda and "financing terrorism."
Baghdad Meziane, 36, and Brahim Benmerzouga, 30, were arrested two weeks after the September attacks as part of a pan-European investigation.
Police said Meziane had been charged with "directing al Qaeda, an organisation concerned in the commission of terrorism, inciting an act of terrorism overseas ... and four charges related to the financing of terrorism."
Benmerzouga was also charged with being an al Qaeda member, along with four charges of financing terrorism, possessing an article for the purposes of terrorism and possessing racially inflammatory material "with a view to distribution."
A Bosnian court ordered the release of five Algerians and a Yemeni detained in October on suspicion of involvement in international terrorism, but the Pentagon immediately said U.S. troops in Bosnia would take the six into custody.
They were arrested by police acting on a U.S. tip after threats closed the U.S. and British embassies in Sarajevo for five days in mid-October.
A total of nine people suspected of al Qaeda links were arrested on Thursday in Pakistan and the Philippines. Police in Manila said they had also seized a ton of explosives.
In the most significant military move against terrorism since the Afghanistan campaign, U.S. soldiers set up camp on an island in the southern Philippines where they will join operations against Muslim rebels linked to bin Laden.
The deployment, which will total about 650 troops described as non-combat personnel, sparked a chorus of protests in Manila. Government critics said President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo could be impeached for allowing in foreign soldiers.
In a paper submitted to the U.N.'s International Maritime Organisation this week, the U.S. Coast Guard called for security officers to be placed on all ships.
It also called for identification checks for all sea crews, security reviews of all ports, and discussions on the electronic sealing of all shipping containers.
"Millions of containers are used to ship goods worldwide ... The potential for the use of these containers by terrorists for atrocious acts is very real," said the USCG paper.
Separately, Customs Commissioner Robert Bonner said in a speech prepared for delivery at the Center for Strategic and International Studies the possibility existed that "terrorists such as al Qaeda could smuggle a crude nuclear device in one of the more than 50,000 (shipping) containers that arrive in the U.S. each day".
"One can only imagine the devastation of a small nuclear explosion at one of our seaports," he said
SEOUL, Jan 18 Asia Pulse - The Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency (KOTRA) said Friday that it will sponsor a three-day export promotion session from Jan. 30 for some 29 leading buyers from Pakistan, a key transit point for Afghanistan.
The Pakistani buyers are those involved in trade with Afghanistan through the Afghan Transit Trade Agreement, ATTA.
ATTA is an agreement Afghanistan signed with Pakistan in 1965 to import materials free of tariffs from Pakistan and constitutes a major channel for Afghan imports and exports.
A KOTRA source said that the export promotion sessions in Seoul and Taegu are designed to help provide momentum for exporting Korean goods to Afghanistan in connection with post-war rehabilitation projects.
Major items for the export promotion session include textiles, fabric, footwear, blankets and other daily necessities.
Meanwhile, ministerial talks on Afghan reconstruction are scheduled for Jan. 21-22 in Tokyo. Korea is known to be planning to provide hundreds of million dollars in aid.
Photos
Friday January 18, 10:02 AM
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Football is back on Afghanistan's killing fields.
After six years of Taliban rule, soccer teams ran out onto Kandahar's sports stadium pitch on Thursday for the first 90-minute game in the southern city since the austere, dictatorial theocracy fell to U.S. bombs and fighters of the new, interim government in December.
This time there is no blood underfoot.
The players may wear shorts and the colour red. They do not have to worry about the length of their hair, or whether their beards are long enough.
The concrete stadium, built in 1996 with U.N. funds, has been a sinister place for six years -- the scene of public executions, amputations and floggings for such Taliban crimes as adultery and homosexuality.
Even women were forced to kneel on the pitch to be shot in the head.
"We used to look over our shoulders throughout our 30-minute matches, always watching the entrance of the stadium in case the Taliban suddenly appeared," said goalkeeper Mohammed from the Zwanan (Youth) team.
Now there are plans for a league for Kandahar's dozen clubs, and a tournament is planned in a few weeks.
"Sometimes players would turn up 15 or 20 minutes after one of these executions and blood would still be there, so they'd try to cover it with soil," Asif, a 19-year-old groundsman, told Reuters.
The matches were limited to 30 minutes. If they wanted to keep out of trouble, they had to keep their hair short, and grow beards of at least eight centimetres.
They had to wear the long shirts and baggy trousers, known as shalwar kameez, and the colour red was banned.
BEATING PLAYERS
Shorts were banned, too, presumably on the grounds that they were sexually provocative in some way, and hence un-Islamic.
"I remember they'd sometimes interrupt a game, and drive their pickup trucks around the stadium scattering the players and beating them," Asif said.
Friendly matches could not take place during prayers, or the players would be arrested, beaten and flung in jail.
On Thursday only one soccer player was wearing shorts -- silver, and down to his knees.
"It's very cold," the centre forward laughed when asked about it. The rest of the two teams -- Zwanan and Kandahar Club -- wore track-suit bottoms.
"The new government has not announced what is, and what is not, permitted," Asif said. "So some of us are a little worried and are playing safe until they do tell everyone."
In the meantime, scores of small boys with grubby faces watched intently from the sidelines, dreaming of becoming Afghanistan's own David Beckham.
For the players, there was the no small matter of expense.
More than 20 years of civil war, foreign occupation, anarchy and misrule -- compounded by Washington's declaration of war on terrorism prompted by the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington -- have impoverished most people.
Finding the next meal has priority over dreams of a new pair of trainers or Manchester United colours.
No one at the Kandahar ground forgets the experience of a visiting Pakistani side.
"The Taliban beat them because they wore shorts, because their beards were short and their hair too long," Asif said.
"It was terribly humiliating. They took the visitors away and beat them some more and shaved their heads and jailed them for two days."
There was no return match, naturally.
MANILA (Reuters) - President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said on Friday that U.S. troops were in the Philippines to provide training, not to flush out rebels linked to Osama bin Laden, amid protests over Washington's biggest expansion of war against terror beyond Afghanistan.
"People might think the soldiers are there for combat, but they are not there to do combat, they are there to do training… the joint military exercises are intended to be mutual training," Arroyo said in an interview on CNN television.
The United States has sent special forces, support and technical staff to the Mindanao region of the southern Philippines to assist local troops who are fighting the Abu Sayyaf Muslim guerrillas identified by Washington as part of bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Opposition politicians and left-wing groups here have said the move violates a constitutional bar on the presence of foreign troops in the country with former senator Francisco Tatad saying it has made the country "a virtual extension of Afghanistan".
Government critics said Arroyo could be impeached and Vice-President Teofisto Guingona late on Thursday denied rumours he had resigned as foreign secretary because of differences with Arroyo over the issue.
The government however has said the deployment of the American forces is under the regular Balikatan (shoulder-to-shoulder) exercises between the two countries, which is permitted under the constitution which allows for training and transit of foreign forces.
Arroyo conceded that nationalist elements in the country were opposed to the move but said: "The vast majority, the overwhelming majority of the people support it… because the people want to see an end to the Abu Sayyaf problem."
The guerrilla group, which has said it wants to set up an Islamic homeland in the south of the country, seems to pursue kidnap for ransom as its main activity.
It has been holding American missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham and a Filipina nurse for more than seven months in thick jungle on the island of Basilan, 950 km (600 miles) south of Manila.
Asked why local troops had been unable to rescue the hostages and eliminate the group, Arroyo said: "Its very similar to why we (coalition forces) haven't got Osama bin Laden. It's really difficult, the terrain, the fact that there are sympathisers around who give aid and comfort… and in the case of the Philippines we do have quite antiquated equipment, we are only starting now the modernisation of the armed forces."
Arroyo, celebrating her first anniversary as president this weekend after a popular revolt ousted former leader Joseph Estrada last January, also defended criticism that she was being diverted from focusing on the problem of alleviating poverty.
"I see them as one whole because the overarching fight is the war against poverty. The war against terrorism takes resources away from the war against poverty so the sooner that we neutralise terrorism in southwestern Philippines the better."
Friday January 18, 9:39 AM
SYDNEY, Jan 18 (AFP) -An Australian SAS soldier has been seriously injured by a landmine in southern Afghanistan, defence officials said Friday.
The soldier, Australia's first casualty of the US war on terrorism, lost two toes from his right foot in the incident, which happened on Thursday, Army chief Lieutenant General Peter Cosgrove told reporters.
He was treated at the scene, had surgery in a military hospital in Kandahar and was then flown to an American military hospital in Germany.
The soldier, whose identity was withheld at his parents' request, had been based in Western Australia.
"He was on patrol in southern Afghanistan searching for Taliban and al-Qaeda members in their former bases," Cosgrove said.
"I can confirm that while his injuries are serious they're not life-threatening.
"He received immediate treatment from Australian special forces personnel at the accident site."
Cosgrove said the soldier was evacuated from the scene by US Black Hawk helicopters and underwent surgery at a military medical facility at Kandahar.
"His big toe was removed, blown off, in the accident, and his second toe was subsequently amputated," he said.
"He has got multiple fractures of the foot and right ankle and has sustained some superficial lacerations
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