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Thursday, December 14, 2006
Questions plague decision to delay summit: Was terror attack imminent? (11:25 a.m.)
MANILA -- A typhoon may not have been the worst hazard that 16 Asian leaders avoided when Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo postponed their annual summits this week.
The typhoon - cited as the reason for the postponement of the meetings - largely missed the summit site in Cebu province. But officials lent credence Wednesday to warnings from several foreign embassies a week ago that al-Qaida-linked militants may have been in the final stages of preparing to carry out the first major terror attack of the year in Southeast Asia.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Tuesday that the threat to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and East Asia summits was twofold: the typhoon and terrorism.
"The Philippines did not say much other than that there was a difficulty in ensuring safety" for the Asian leaders, added Khieu Kanharith, the chief Cambodian government spokesman.
In unusually blunt criticism, Japanese Trade Minister Akira Amari claimed the summit never should have been planned for a tourist area, called the typhoon explanation "extremely puzzling" and said the situation has undermined the Philippines' credibility.
"Just the idea of gathering the leaders of 16 countries on tourist-infested Cebu island poses an extreme security risk," Amari wrote on his Web log.
That issue will remain when the summits are rescheduled for the same venue, likely for next month.
While Arroyo's spokesman, Ignacio Bunye, did not directly address the terror threat, he insisted Wednesday that weather sparked the postponement. The storm-prone country was hit by a massive typhoon a week earlier that left 1,000 people dead or missing.
"We respect the views of other officials in the region, but the Philippines did the right thing in taking no chances with the safety of the leaders," Bunye said. "We all know the fickle nature of typhoons and there was no sense at all to act in a reckless and wanton manner."
A 10,000-man security contingent was guarding Cebu, an Arroyo stronghold that also is believed to have supporters - perhaps even a small cell - of the extremist Abu Sayyaf group, notorious for bombings, beheadings and mass kidnappings.
Although small-scale attacks in southern Thailand have resulted in a rapidly rising death toll and a bombing in the Philippines in October killed six, Southeast Asia hasn't seen a major terror attack this year.
Officials credit crackdowns on militants, increased surveillance and improved cross-border cooperation that was expected to get a further boost with a binding treaty on counterterrorism cooperation that Asean leaders were to have signed.
Still, terrorist threats remain strong in the region, fed by a dangerous mix of poverty, guns, local insurgencies and extremist influence. Analysts say that al-Qaida-linked groups could be mutating toward having more autonomy but are struggling to adapt to the more efficient counterterrorism efforts.
"Any assessment that the threat of terrorism has almost ended is a hallucination," said Rodolfo Mendoza, a senior Philippine police official who has done extensive studies of terrorism during operations against al-Qaida-linked militants.(AP) |
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