10-month RP-US counter-terrorism training to start Feb. 16 in Zamboanga

US military advisers will train around 1,600 Filipino soldiers next year as part of counter-terrorism cooperation in the southern Philippines, Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes said yesterday.

Reyes said the training program forms part of a "counter-terrorism module" designed by both governments "and it will be starting in February in Malagutay (military training camp) in Zamboanga City."

The Security Assistance Training Module (SATM) beginning Feb. 16 would last 10 months and involve 16 "light infantry companies" of Filipino soldiers, he added. A hundred soldiers make up one such unit.

"The counter-terrorism module will run from February. It will involve 16 infantry companies. It will be three weeks per company so it will run up to November," Reyes told reporters.

"This is part of the security assistance given to us by the United States particularly in our cooperation with them in the fight against global terrorism," he said.

Reyes said US forces were still "in the planning stage" for the exercises and declined to answer how many American troops would be involved. The SATM is funded by the US government to the tune of $25 million.

Separately, some 310 US troops are to arrive here for joint training with their Filipino counterparts in small-scale Balance Piston from Jan. 27 to Feb. 21 next year at an army camp on the main Philippine island of Luzon, Reyes said.

Reyes said the regular Balikatan is scheduled from April 28 to May 9 and will be conducted in Luzon but admitted there are discussions between both sides exploring the possibility of conducting the exercises in Mindanao.

"There is no scheduled Balikatan in Mindanao in January as reported in the newspapers," Reyes said. "Although there are discussions about staging Balikatan in Mindanao again, there had been no official communication regarding this."

More than 600 US Special Forces troops and support units took part in Balikatan 02-1, a joint anti-terror training program with Filipino combat troops on the southern island of Basilan earlier this year.

That exercise focused on combating the Abu Sayyaf, a group of Muslim guerrilla kidnappers with alleged links to the militant al-Qaeda network, responsible for mounting major terrorist attacks worldwide.

At present there are about 300 US Special Forces troops in Zamboanga and Basilan securing Project Bayanihan, an offshoot civic-humanitarian activity of Balikatan 02-1. — AFP, With Paolo Romero