U.S. Sailors Await Orders to Go Ashore to Support Counterterrorism Push in Philippines
By Pauline Jelinek Associated Press Writer
Published: Apr 17, 2002
WASHINGTON (AP) - American sailors are waiting off the Philippine coast for approval to go ashore in a plan to expand counterterrorism efforts against Muslim extremists, senior defense officials said Wednesday.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has approved the deployment of 300 Navy Seabees, engineers who will build an aircraft landing strip, pave roads and undertake other civil projects in support of U.S. troops already on Basilan Island to advise and train local forces fighting Abu Sayyaf rebels, the officials said on condition of anonymity.
The rebels, who have been linked to al-Qaida terrorists, are holding American missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham of Wichita, Kan., abducted by the Muslim extremist group more than 10 months ago.
The sailors on the USS Germantown left their base in Okinawa last week and are at sea and awaiting approval from the Philippine government to deploy to the island for an expected three-month stay.
Meanwhile, the head of the Philippine military said Wednesday that prospects of rescuing the missionaries couple are high, with Filipino forces closing in on rebels after the capture of 18 over the weekend.
"The surrendering of the group points to the fact that these people are already having limited space ... to escape," Gen. Teofilo de Los Santos said. "They are hopelessly short of foodstuff to support their day-to-day sustenance."
The 300 Seabees have a Marine contingent with them for force protection. Their arrival will bring to more than 900 the number of Americans sent this year for the counterterrorism program. Already in country are 600 Americans, including 160 special operations forces and their support.
Officials stressed that the $3.9 million construction program, which also includes digging fresh water wells and improving a causeway, is meant to support the American forces.
Though the infrastructure improvements clearly will be a long-term benefit to Filipinos, their comments were meant to discourage the thinking that the Bush administration is getting involved in nation-building, which it has said it opposes. Rumsfeld also has said repeatedly that he wants to get the military out of nonmilitary tasks, such as the two-decade-old peacekeeping job in the Sinai.
The deployment of the 600 Americans to the Philippines in January was the first known expansion of the military effort against terrorism outside Afghanistan, where the six-month war is concentrating on Osama bin Laden's operatives and former Taliban rulers who harbored them.
Since then, officials also have said they will send military trainers to Yemen and the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
The administration has said that there are al-Qaida cells in 50 to 60 countries and that it will be working with different countries in different ways to try fight them.
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