RP, US sign police assistance agreement

The US State Department has asked the United States Congress to allocate over $10 million for law enforcement assistance to the Philippines.

The request for additional funding was contained in a Memorandum of Intent (MOI) between the two governments, which was signed yesterday by US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone and Interior and Local Government Secretary Jose Lina Jr.

Ricciardone said the MOI is related to the State Department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance Training Program (ATAP), which set guidelines for needs assessments, participant selection, program reviews, equipment grants and medical and administrative matters related to the implementation of the program in the Philippines.

Lina said the MOI will focus on enhancing law enforcement, protection of national leadership, control over international borders, protection of infrastructure, management of terrorist attacks and its national security implications.

According to Ricciardone, a total of 1,330 law enforcement and response officers in the Philippines received training in US civilian law enforcement programs.

"The goals of these ongoing program and several new initiatives are to promote the rule of law and assist the government of the Philippines’ efforts to strengthen the Philippine National Police (PNP) and other law enforcement agencies through improved training and equipment and organizational reforms based on worldwide best practices," the US embassy said in a statement.

Ricciardone also said the program will also assist the Philippines in capacity-building and reform on its ATAP, Joint Inter-Agency Task Force (JIATF) and International Narcotics and Law (INL) enforcement.

For the INL alone, Ricciardone said the current funding is somewhere between $1 million and $2 million.

The law enforcement assistance to the Philippines from the US, as a whole, was pegged at $3 million in 2003.

For 2004, the State Department is asking the US Congress for a little over $10 million for new law enforcement assistance, the bulk of which will be spread evenly between the INL and ATAP.

The JIATF will also be given a small percentage of that budget — around $1 million.

Ricciardone said one of the topics to be discussed at the meeting between US President George W. Bush and President Arroyo is how to improve law enforcement in the Philippines.

US National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice, in a briefing in Washington, also cited the need for the US and Southeast Asian countries, particularly the Philippines and Indonesia, to enhance cooperation in the fight against terrorism in the region.

Rice said the Philippines and Indonesia have the "most serious issues" regarding terrorism, but have been equally serious about addressing the problem.

"But what’s really important is intelligence and law enforcement cooperation to run this down and to capture these people (terrorists) and to take the intelligence that you find from the entire region," Rice said.

The US is also providing $2.4 million over a three-year period to fund the Automated Fingerprint Identification System that will be compatible with the US government’s own AFIS systems and other foreign donor programs.