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February 3, 2002, AFP, Terror cells exist across Southeast Asia: Arroyo,

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February 3, 2002, AFP, Terror cells exist across Southeast Asia: Arroyo,
Sunday 11:34 AM

WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (AFP) -

Terrorist cells exist across southeast Asia, Philippines President Gloria Arroyo told Newsweek magazine, part of the reason she has welcomed US troops onto Philippine soil to train its military.

The US troops will stay for six months and "enhance the capability of our soldiers to fight terrorism with training, intelligence and equipment from the United States," Arroyo said in an interview in the magazine's Monday issue.

"I would like to be successful in fighting terror so that we can move on to fight poverty, so we don't have another breeding ground for terrorists."

More than 100 American soldiers are training local troops to hunt down the Abu Sayyaf kidnapping group that allegedly has links to the al-Qaeda network of terror suspect Osama bin Laden.

Arroyo said al-Qaeda was not the only terrorist group active in her region, though she did say that bin Laden's brother-in-law had lived in the Philippines until 1995.

Al-Qaeda operated front organizations in the Philippines, but after Manila assisted the US prosecution of the men responsible for the 1993 World Trade center bombings, "bin Laden's brother-in-law left and the front organizations closed shop," she said.

"As far as I am concerned, terrorism is not a franchise only of al-Qaeda," she said. "We fight terrorism wherever it is."

Scattered anti-American protests, including threats by Communist insurgencies of possible clashes with the US troops and an incident in which a US Air Force plane was fired upon does not mean Filipinos oppose their government, she insisted.

"I am not having a hard time," she said. "It's not opposition to my administration, but opposition to American presence in the Philippines."

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