Negroponte: JI terrorists using RP as sanctuary

Regional terrorist group Jemaah Islamiyah is using the Philippines as a sanctuary and the country must confront the threat, America’s top spy said yesterday.

US Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte, who was in Manila as part of a visit to allies in East Asia, said the United States continues to see the Philippines as a "close partner" in the war on terror and is ready to provide assistance to improve the country’s counterterrorism capability.

At a dinner Tuesday with President Arroyo at Malacañang, Negroponte prodded the Philippine government to pass an anti-terrorism law.

"Southern (Philippines) is a focal point of terrorist and security threats," Negroponte told The STAR yesterday. "International terrorists, especially Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), have... used Philippine territory as a sanctuary for some of their activities."

Security officials in the region have expressed concern that JI, loosely linked to al-Qaeda, continues to maintain terrorist training centers in areas protected by certain members of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Central Mindanao.

Two Malaysians tagged as the brains behind the nightclub bombings that killed 202 people on the Indonesian island of Bali in 2002 are believed to have taken refuge in these sanctuaries in Mindanao. Washington has put up a combined bounty of $11 million for the capture of the two fugitives.

Singapore authorities reportedly warned Manila that JI militants had plotted to launch terror attacks during the just concluded 23rd Southeast Asian Games in the Philippines.

Negroponte’s arrival in Manila Tuesday afternoon coincided with the suspension of public services at the US Embassy in Manila in the wake of what Press Attaché Matthew Lussenhop described as a "plausible threat."

The services will resume today.

Lussenhop denied that the threat was connected to the visit of Negroponte - his first to the country where he served as ambassador from 1993 to 1996, and his first to Asia since becoming the first US director of national intelligence earlier this year.

As part of a "national intelligence strategy" released by Negroponte’s office last October, the US is strengthening foreign intelligence relationships and human intelligence capability.

Negroponte declined to go into specifics about US intelligence cooperation with the Philippines, but said Washington planned to increase human intelligence capabilities worldwide by as much as 50 percent over the next years.

"With the end of the Cold War, we allowed our human intelligence capabilities to decline somewhat and there was, if you will, a hollowing-out of our intelligence services," Negroponte told The STAR in an interview at the US Embassy residence in Forbes Park in Makati City. "In the wake of 9/11, the decision was made that we had to restore and increase those capabilities."

Asked if he thought the Philippines had the capability to contain the terrorist threat, he cited the arrest of the Valentine’s Day bombers and said, "I think this is a dynamic, ongoing process... you’ve had some successes, and you have captured some significant terrorists."

"In a long-term struggle such as this, people have their ups and downs, they have their wins and their losses," he added. "I think by strengthening your own institutions, by passing your anti-terrorist legislation - I think that’s one of the areas we think would be very important."

He said he discussed this with the President at the Malacañang dinner where National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales was also present.

"I think that all the Filipino officials that I spoke to believe that it’s desirable to seek the passage of that legislation, and that it would be a helpful tool in confronting the terrorist threat that you see in this country," Negroponte said.

The peace dividend

Forging peace with the MILF, he said, could help neutralize the support given by rogue separatist militants to JI and the Abu Sayyaf.

"That is one of the reasons it is considered important that the peace talks between the government of the Philippines and the MILF be successful and that the talks being brokered by the government of Malaysia bear fruit, because that would help deny JI sanctuary," Negroponte said.

US Embassy Chargé d’ Affaires Paul Jones agreed.

"We have seen the MILF come out publicly and in our observations, the leading elements of the MILF are now saying that the terrorists are not welcome in MILF territory. And that has been a very important factor, which could be consolidated with a peace agreement being signed," Jones said. "We are very encouraged by that."

Negroponte and embassy officials clarified that his arrival had been planned for some time and was not a surprise visit. He left yesterday for visits to South Korea and Japan.

Since assuming his post in April after serving as the United States’ first ambassador to post-war Iraq, Negroponte has visited the United Kingdom and parts of the Middle East. His ongoing Asian tour is just his third foreign trip as America’s top spy.

"I am visiting friendly allied countries, countries with which we have important security interests," Negroponte said yesterday.

He said his meetings with Mrs. Arroyo Tuesday and with Philippine national security and intelligence officials yesterday morning were meant "essentially to compare notes on how we view the international terrorist situation, since the United States and the Philippines are close partners in the international war on terrorism."

US President George W. Bush had created the post of director of national intelligence, which oversees 15 spy agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency, to prevent a repeat of the failure of intelligence that has been blamed for the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001 as well as wrong assessments of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction.

Negroponte, 65, was nominated by Bush in February this year.

"The real keyword of our intelligence strategy, a watchword if you will, is integration - integration of our intelligence effort," he said yesterday. "We want to integrate foreign, military and domestic intelligence so that we avoid repetition of the mistakes of 9/11, and of our weapons of mass destruction failure, and that we learn the lessons of the recent past."

Negroponte flew to Australia from Hawaii before visiting the Philippines.

"If you are involved in the international war on terror, this is something that cannot be done alone," he said. "No one country can carry out these activities alone."

He declined to comment on political developments in the Philippines.

Negroponte was also ambassador to Honduras and Mexico. He left the Foreign Service in 1997 to become the executive vice president of McGraw-Hill publishing company. He returned to diplomacy as ambassador to the United Nations in 2001 and helped the US pitch the war on Iraq to the UN. Last year, he was named ambassador to Iraq.

At the Palace, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita confirmed that Negroponte had separate meetings with the President and Gonzales Tuesday night where the latter gave a briefing on the government’s accomplishments in neutralizing terror suspects.

"The purpose of (former) Ambassador Negroponte’s visit is really to take a look at how things are with an allied country such as the Philippines as far as our counterterrorism program is concerned," Ermita said, adding that Negroponte might have wanted to check on the effectiveness of the intelligence exchange.

He however said the meeting with the President was more of a social function than anything else. — With Paolo Romero