February 4, 2002, AFP, Philippine military warns Muslim rebels over threat to Americans,

Monday 5:37 PM

Armed attacks against US troops in the Philippines will bring swift retribution, the Philippines military warned as the two allies mounted a joint anti-terror operation in a Muslim guerrilla zone.

The 12,500-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the country's biggest Muslim separatist group, had warned on Sunday that its fighters would shoot American soldiers who strayed into their areas on Basilan island.

Officials have said the object of the joint operations was to crush the Abu Sayyaf, a small group of Islamic militants linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network and holding a US couple and a Filipina nurse hostage on Basilan.

"I hope the MILF will not get involved in this exercise but if this will happen, the MILF will be dealt with accordingly," military southern command spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Danilo Servando said.

The MILF has been fighting to set up an independent Islamic state in the south since 1978. Its leaders are in talks with the government after signing a ceasefire in September.

Apart from the MILF threat, communist New People's Army (NPA) guerrillas were accused of firing on a US MC-130 airplane flying over the northern Philippines last week in a separate training exercise.

The communists rejected the charge, but said they were prepared to "crush" the US forces.

In Manila, some 800 mostly leftist students marched on the US embassy demanding a pullout of US troops, whose presence here they say violates the constitution.

They chanted anti-US slogans as a phalanx of riot police armed with batons and shields stood guard outside the gate.

The government maintains the protests are scattered and that official surveys indicate that most Filipinos and other countries support the US troop deployment.

A presidential palace statement on Monday said President Gloria Arroyo has received an offer from Jordan's King Abdullah II for intelligence sharing concerning Muslim militants here.

No details were disclosed, although the statement said the king had referred to the Abu Sayyaf.

Arroyo described the Jordanian offer as "very important", the statement said.

A senior MILF leader, Shariff Julabbi, on Sunday said the rebels believe the joint exercises would give US troops a window of opportunity to mount a covert rescue operation to spring Abu Sayyaf captives Martin and Gracia Burnham of Kansas held by the rebels since May.

Julabbi reminded the US troops that the MILF also controls certain areas in Basilan.

MILF forces "are maintaining a high level of alertness in Basilan", Julabbi said.

"We will respond to any threats. We will shoot them if they encroach into our territories."

MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu however stressed that rebel forces will only fire back if attacked, adding his group was sticking to the truce.

"Our forces throughout (the main southern island of) Mindanao will only fire if attacked," Kabalu said over local radio.

MILF forces have a "standing order" to arrest Abu Sayyaf gunmen who seek sanctuary in MILF territories, "but it does not mean that they would be turned over to the government."

About 600 US troops are to join the exercises in the south, which is largely seen as an extension of the US global war on terrorism that began in Afghanistan.

Officially, the US soldiers are barred from joining combat operations but will be armed and can fire back under attack.