4,500 US troops in RP for war games

Philippine and American troops opened joint training exercises yesterday aimed at strengthening the Philippines’ fight against terrorism.

Over the next two weeks, 4,500 US Marines and sailors from Okinawa, Japan will join up to 700 Filipino soldiers in the annual training maneuvers, called the "Talon Vision and Amphibious Landing Exercises."

"It’s not necessarily a counterterrorism exercise," US Marine Capt. Burrell Parmer told The STAR.

But skills acquired by Philippine troops in the course of the war games could be used against terrorists, said Burrell, public affairs officer of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, which has 2,000 troops participating in the war games.

The US Navy’s Task Force 76 and Amphibious Squadron 11 have 2,500 sailors in the exercises, Burrell said.

Officials of the Armed Forces of the Philippines said the joint exercises will polish the counterterrorism skills of participating Filipino troops.

Joint exercises by the two countries have taken on greater urgency in recent years as the AFP has launched US-backed offensives against al-Qaeda-linked groups in Mindanao.

"The exercises are designed to improve interoperability, increase readiness and continue the professional relationship between the United States and Philippine armed forces," Philippine Marine spokesman Maj. Melquiades Ordiales said in a statement, as the two forces held the opening ceremony for the exercises at the Marine headquarters at Fort Bonifacio in Taguig.

Parmer said Talon events will be held across Luzon, including the former US air base in Clark Field in Pampanga and Crow Valley in Tarlac. Amphibious landing exercises will be held in Ternate, Cavite.

There will also be training activities in the jungle areas of Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija and the mountains and beaches of San Miguel in Zambales.

Parmer said the month-long exercises will include medical and civic action programs to be undertaken by US troops. There will be engineering activities in Ternate. US troops will also donate computers to several high schools.

Held under the aegis of the RP-US Mutual Defense Treaty, military exercises between the two countries have increased amid an upsurge of terrorist attacks in Metro Manila and Mindanao.

The latest war games will include contingents from the Philippine Air Force, who are being trained as ground combatants due to the PAF’s lack of aircraft.

US forces have been providing intelligence support and supplying communications to Filipino troops hunting down Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) and Abu Sayyaf terrorists.

Security officials say two Malaysian masterminds of the nightclub bombings that killed 202 people on the Indonesian island of Bali in October 2002 have been sighted in Maguindanao in the company of Abu Sayyaf chieftain Khadaffy Janjalani.

The US government has offered a bounty of $10 million for the capture of one of the Malaysians, Dulmatin, and $1 million for Umar Patek. The two men are believed to be members of JI.

In 1992 the Philippine Senate voted to shut down the US bases at Clark Field and Subic Bay. US troops returned to the country in 2002 as the Philippines expressed support for the US-led war on terror.

In three-month war games dubbed Balikatan 2002, US troops helped the AFP flush out Abu Sayyaf guerrillas from their base in Basilan. The guerrillas fled with two American missionaries and a Filipina nurse in tow. The nurse and one of the Americans were killed in an encounter between Philippine troops and the Abu Sayyaf kidnappers.

Janjalani managed to flee Basilan before the start of the war games. But the group’s flamboyant spokesman Aldam Tilao, alias Abu Sabaya, was later killed in an encounter with Philippine troops in the waters off the Zamboanga peninsula. — With AP