President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and his Philippines counterpart Gloria Arroyo agreed yesterday to boost intelligence cooperation to combat al-Qaeda-linked militants.
Musharraf, on a swing through Asia, arrived here late on Monday from India and was given a military welcome yesterday at the Malacanang presidential palace ahead of his talks with Arroyo.
Musharraf, who did not speak to the press, was to address a joint session of the Philippine Congress later in the day.
Arroyo said she compared notes with Musharraf on their respective governments' campaigns against terrorism.
"He believes as much as I do that when we fight terrorism, there is the military aspect and then there's the socio-cultural aspect," Arroyo told a news conference after the talks.
"So on the military aspect, we agreed to enhance our intelligence exchange," Arroyo said. "It's very very important in the world of international terrorism."
Arroyo said her national security adviser Norberto Gonzales is to work closely with Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which has been tracking down key operatives of the Taliban after the hardline Islamic militia were toppled from power by US-led forces in 2001.
Pakistan abandoned the Taliban in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the US. The Taliban had sheltered Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network which carried out the attacks.
Gonzales is tentatively scheduled to meet with ISI officials in June.
Arroyo said both the Philippines and Pakistan will also work together in addressing the root causes of terrorism through enhanching "inter-faith leadership dialogue" to moderate teachings in Muslim schools or madrassas.
The Philippines has been struggling with a decades-old Muslim separatist insurgency in the main southern island of Mindanao.
It has opened peace talks with the 12,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) but US military advisers are helping it fight the Abu Sayyaf, a small group of al-Qaeda-linked militants.
Key al-Qaeda suspects are believed to have once used the southern Philippines as a training base.
In 1995 Filipino and US intelligence operatives foiled a plot by militant Ramzi Yousef to blow up American airlines from Manila.
Yousef, who was arrested in Pakistan, is serving a lengthy prison sentence in the US for the 1993 bombing of New York's World Trade Center.
Musharraf and Arroyo also witnessed the signing of a memorandum of understanding that will serve as a "legal framework to facilitate cooperation and inter-operability between the security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies of the two countries.".
The agreement was signed by Philippine Interior Secretary Angelo Reyes and Pakistan Foreign Secretary Riaz Khan.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
RSS