JI threat a major concern in GRP-MILF peace talks

DAVAO CITY — The continuing threat posed by the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) terrorist network remains a major concern in the government’s ongoing peace efforts with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), officials said yesterday.

"The JI issue will remain a major concern and subject of continuing verificatory actions by the (Joint Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities or JCCCH) of the two parties," Armed Forces vice chief Lt. Gen. Rodolfo Garcia said.

Garcia, who heads the government team to the JCCCH, said the two panels have acknowledged their receipt of a report submitted by the Bantay Ceasefire, a non-government organization, that JI members have continued to conduct training at Barangay Cararao in Butig, Lanao del Sur.

At least 15 new JI members reportedly graduated from training in Butig last Jan. 15.

The CCCH ended yesterday its 15th meeting, held in this city, which was attended by representatives from the MILF led by team chairman Benjie Midtimbang. The JI issue was among the items listed in the meeting’s agenda.

Garcia said the media have been focused on the JI because of persistent reports that the Jakarta-based terrorist network was responsible for the series of bombings in Mindanao as well as in Metro Manila.

Members of the JI, which allegedly has links with the Saudi-born terrorist Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terror network, also reportedly perpetrated several bombings in Indonesia.

Indonesia has been identified as the JI’s main operations center, with Singapore and Malaysia as its financial centers. The Philippines — and Mindanao in particular — was pinpointed as the network’s training ground and key transit point for weapons and explosives.

The Philippine government, in its effort to restart stalled peace talks with the MILF, has repeatedly asked the Muslim separatist group to renounce its reported link with the JI, whose members were alleged to have conducted training in known MILF territories in the mountains between Maguindanao and Lanao.

The MILF has vehemently denied any links to the JI, despite reports that JI-trained MILF members were said to be behind the spate of bombings that struck Mindanao last year.

Last November, President Arroyo vowed to step up the campaign to flush JI members out of the country.

"There are some JI operatives who are still in the country and they are being hunted down by the government," she said. "We are keeping them on the run so they cannot consolidate to plot out large-scale terrorist actions."

The President reaffirmed the government’s all-out war against terrorism in an official statement she issued a day after Ambassador J. Cofer Black, the United States’ top envoy for counter-terrorism, praised her staunch commitment to fight the menace posed by JI extremists and other terror groups in the region.

The President, however, admitted that the government’s operations against the JI are hampered by alleged MILF "lost commands" who have been reported to be coddling some of these Indonesian extremists.

"These JI cells are at times given free passage by low-level armed groups and we have asked the MILF leadership to ostracize and isolate the terrorists," Mrs. Arroyo said.

She vowed that the government "will press on with the manhunt as well as push the peace process with the MILF so that the communities can be freed from this extremist threat."

The 12,500-strong MILF has been waging a 25-year-old guerrilla campaign to set up an Islamic state in the southern part of the largely Roman Catholic Philippines.

The MILF and Manila signed a peace accord in Kuala Lumpur in 2001 but the agreement was shattered in February last year when the Philippine military launched a massive offensive against the rebels that left about 200 people dead, mostly MILF fighters.

The government said it was forced to attack the camp because it was allegedly used by the MILF to shelter terrorists, kidnappers and other lawless elements.

The offensive led to a declaration of an all-out war by then MILF chairman Hashim Salamat.

More than 200 JI members have been arrested in five countries across Southeast Asia since 2001. Despite the arrests, the group still poses a threat, intelligence agencies say.

Several alleged members of the group have confessed to carrying out the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed 202 people, most of them foreign tourists. It has also been blamed for an Aug. 5, 2003 attack on the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta that killed 12 people.