GMA calls for tougher laws on political murders

MANILA (AFP) - President Gloria Arroyo on Monday called for tougher laws against political killings and warned that the military would not be immune from prosecution.

"It is never right and always wrong to fight terror with terror," Arroyo said in her annual state of the nation address to Congress.

Amid mounting international criticism of extrajudicial killings of leftist dissidents, many of them linked by the military to a long-running communist insurgency, Arroyo urged the legislature to "impose harsher penalties for political killings."

She also urged Congress to impose the "harshest penalties" on soldiers and police involved in such killings.

"We must wipe this stain from our democratic record," the president added.