Advance team of US poll observers arriving in March

The United States is to join an international group of monitors for the Philippine presidential election in May, a US Embassy official said yesterday.

An advance team will fly into Manila in the first week of March to consult with Philippine election officials and pave the ground for the deployment of the monitoring team, US charge d’affaires Joseph Mussomeli told reporters.

"What we already agreed with the (Commission on Elections) is that it will be an international monitoring group. Certainly Americans will be involved," he added.

He said he did not know which other countries will be joining the team.

Separately, the US will be sending at least 40 of its Manila embassy staff across the country to monitor the balloting, Mussomeli said.

Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos confirmed yesterday that observers from the US and some Asian countries are due to arrive in the country but warned them against interfering in the elections.

He said they could face up to six years in prison for interference.

The Comelec is requiring the foreign observers to submit an application letter for accreditation, an information sheet, photographs and an endorsement from their respective ambassadors or consuls.

President Arroyo is polling neck and neck with movie-star opposition candidate Fernando Poe Jr. ahead of the May 10 vote.

Mussomeli said the monitors will "check into procedures" as the government prepares for its first presidential ballot in six years.

On election day itself the team "will be monitoring actual voting booths" as well as the counting of votes to ensure that the democratic process is fair and transparent.

He said the international monitors would be fielded at the invitation of Mrs. Arroyo, who has been "very eager to demonstrate that this will be a fair and credible election."

Mrs. Arroyo, the elected vice president in 1998, came to power in 2001 on the back of a military-supported popular uprising that toppled elected leader Joseph Estrada, a former movie star who is now on trial for corruption.

Meanwhile, the US government is in the process of evaluating the possibility of including the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO).

Mussomeli, in a meeting with the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines, said yesterday that the inclusion of the MILF in the FTO is going through "an assessment process."

"In the next year we might arrive at a conclusion. We remain hopeful that they will not be in the FTO list because of ongoing negotiations, because of their public renunciation of terrorism. We don’t want to cause disruptions on the peace talks," Mussomeli said.

He explained that the evaluation process is similar to what they did with the New People’s Army (NPA) where the monitoring was done for several years before it was decided to put them on the FTO list.

"We have watched the NPA for many years, have followed their modus operandi and after many years of assessing, we reluctantly reached a conclusion that they have to be in the FTO list," Mussomeli said.

The inclusion of the NPA and the Communist Party of the Philippines in the FTO almost caused the breakdown of talks in Oslo between the government and the leftist rebels.

Foreign Secretary Delia Albert in a press conference yesterday admitted that the Philippine government is cooperating with the different foreign governments, including the US, on sharing information about the activities of various organizations, particularly those based in the southern Philippines.

Albert said the assessment being done by the US on the MILF and other organizations has been going on even before the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the US.

Mussomeli’s statement on the MILF comes at a time when the Manila government is set to resume peace talks with the secessionist rebels in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

It is expected that the peace talks will resume in April after the conclusion of exploratory talks and the arrival of peace monitoring teams in Mindanao.

Mussomeli said the US government’s participation in the MILF peace talks will be through the US Agency for International Development which will be providing a grant of $30 million for the MILF after the successful conclusion of the talks.

He said the assessment on the FTO listing of the MILF is a very detailed and meticulous process and largely dependent on the outcome of the peace talks.

"If a genuine peace is reached that gives us very little reason to put them on. If there is a peace accord we don’t have then to deal with that," Mussomeli said. — AFP, Marvin Sy, Jose Aravilla