MANILA - The Philippines on Sunday welcomed a 10-million-dollar US bounty on the head of a senior Jemaah Islamiyah militant believed to be hiding in the jungles of southern Mindanao island.
Presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye said Manila hoped the reward offer would help capture Indonesian Dulmatin, who is believed to be receiving shelter from Khdadday Janjalani, leader of the local Muslim militant group Abu Sayyaf.
“The bounty offered by the US government will definitely drive more civilians and more communities to the manhunt,” Bunye said in a statement.
“These efforts underscore our strong alliance with the US in the fight against terror as well as our partnership with our neighbours to get the Bali bombers and their cohorts.”
Dulmatin is believed to have been one of the masterminds of the 2002 bombings that killed 202 people on the Indonesian island of Bali. The JI is also being blamed for last week’s Bali bomb attacks that left at least 20 dead.
Washington has also offered a one million dollar reward for Umar Patek, another Indonesian JI militant.
The US reward announced Thursday for information that could help capture or kill Dulmatin is second only to the 25 million dollars offered for Osama bin Laden and Iraq insurgency leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
The Abu Sayyaf is a small group of Islamic militants, featured on the US State Department’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. It is wanted for a spate of kidnappings, murders and bomb attacks, including a passenger ferry blast that killed more than 100 people on Manila Bay last year.
Security analysts say the JI has been increasingly building links with the Abu Sayyaf and taking advantage of the Philippines’ porous southern borders to plot attacks in the region.
The Army has closed illegal border passes from Syria with earth mounds and tightened its siege of Syrian-controlled Palestinian guerrilla bases in the Bekaa Valley and hills overlooking Beirut's southern flank as Premier Saniora held Saturday a 2-pronged dialogue with Presidents Assad and Abbas loyalists.
Local media reports said Lebanese army raids targeted posts held by the three main pro-Syrian factions in the Bekaa towns of Taanayel, Rawda and Yanta, seizing mortars, rocket-propelled grenades and explosives and detaining nine Palestinian fighters in the past 24 hours.
Three of the detainees belonging to the Damascus-backed Fatah-Uprising faction were later released and deported to the Syrian capital. There was no solid word on what happened to the six others, but one Beirut TV report said they were all set free late Friday night.
Syria's own Palestinian organization, Al Saiqa, said in a statement from Damascus that its raided center in Taanayel had been closed two weeks before the Syrian army completed its evacuation of Lebanon on April 26 and that the weapons seized by the Lebanese army were all unusable.
Ahmed Jibreel's Popular Front for the Lebanese of Palestine-General Command, Syria's closest Palestinian ally, contends its bases in the Bekaa and Naameh hills south of Beirut are essential to defend Palestinians against potential Israeli attacks without any ill-intentions against Lebanon's own security.
Saniora's main purpose from the dialogue with various Palestinian groupings is to ban Palestinian arms anywhere in Lebanon outside the 12 refugee camps spanning the country from the north to the south through the Bekaa and Beirut, he has ascertained, ruling out an armed confrontation.
This was accepted in advance by President Abbas and the PLO delegation that embraces Fatah, George Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Nayef Hawatmeh's Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP), the Arab Liberation Front and the Armed Struggle Front.
Spokesmen for these groups said in separate statements before going to the Grand Serail for the talks with Saniora at mid-morning that they have their own demands for a durable alliance with the Lebanese authorities—improving living conditions of camp dwellers and reversing sentences passed against Palestinian leaders during Syria's tutelage over Lebanon.
This was an obvious reference to the death sentence handed down against Brig. Gen. Sultan Abul Ainein years ago after convicting him of murder and forming a terrorist network of extortion.
Abul Ainein has long been Fatah's top representative in Lebanon and is currently tipped to become the Palestinian Authority's ambassador to Lebanon once the death sentence is reversed in a hope-for retrial after Syria's evacuation of Lebanon.
He placed all five refugee camps under Fatah's control in south Lebanon at the highest combat alert to support the Lebanese army in fighting off any Israeli troop landings at camps on the outskirts of Lebanon's two port cities of Sidon and Tyre, where he has his command headquarters.
"It is our duty to go on alert after the Lebanese army had placed its troops around the camps on 'red' alert to repulse Israeli paratroop attacks. We have also to defend ourselves," Abul Ainein said at a news conference he held in the Rashidiyeh camp near Tyre on Friday.
PLO spokesman in Lebanon, Marwan Abdelaal, told reporters his meeting with Saniora had been positive and that they decided to "regulate armament inside refugee camps so they do not become security islands."
The other delegation of pro-Syrian factions comprises Jibreel's PFLP-GC, Saiqa, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Their delegation met Saniora shortly after midday and showed no willingness to disband the Bekaa and Naameh strongholds.
Beirut, Updated 09 Oct 05, 08:23
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