PHILIPINES: The United States and the Philippines will formally start joint training exercises tomorrow in preparation for fighting Muslim extremists in the south of the archipelago.
About 600 US soldiers are to take part in the exercises which represent the most significant expansion of the US war on terror after Afghanistan.
"Among friends, anything could be resolved," Brig-Gen Emmanuel Teodosio of the Philippine army said said after talks with Brig-Gen Donald Wurster, chief of US Pacific special operations. The two men will be co-directors of the exercises expected to last six months.
The Philippines has long battled Islamic militants in the south and one group, Abu Sayyaf, suspected by the United States of having links to Osama bin Laden's al- Qaeda network, will be a focus of the training exercises in the former US colony.
The exercises call for about 160 US Special Forces soldiers to join Filipino troops in patrol in the jungles of mountainous Basilan, near Zamboanga, where Abu Sayyaf guerrillas have been holding a US missionary couple and a Filipina nurse hostage for months.
Critics of President Macapagal Arroyo have criticised the US military presence as a violation of the constitution, which bars the presence of foreign combat troops unless under a formal treaty.
Ms Arroyo, during her visit to London on Monday, said the US forces would only act as trainers and not front-line fighters.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon said yesterday it could not confirm reports that as many as 1,200 al-Qaeda fighters have regrouped in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan, while noting that the militant network remains a threat there even as the war against it expands to other countries.
"The war is absolutely not over," Pentagon spokesman Lieut -Col David Lapan said.
In Afghanistan, Governor Padsha Khan, incoming ruler of Paktia province and a powerful mujahedeen commander, said he was preparing some 6,000 fighters to launch an attack on Zurmat, where the al-Qaeda fighters were reportedly regrouping, but he first needed to gather more intelligence on the situation.
Police investigating international terrorism were questioning six men arrested in north-east England yesterday on suspicion of raising funds and providing support for extremist Islamic terror groups.
The arrests are not being directly linked to the terrorist attacks on the US last September and the men, aged between 29 years-old and 46 years-old, are not suspected of being members of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network.
After an extensive investigation which involved intelligence supplied by anti-terrorist officers from Scotland Yard, more than 150 officers from the Durham and Cleveland police forces carried out early morning raids in Darlington, Co Durham, and in Red car, Middlesbrough and Hartlepool, in Teesside.
Three men were arrested in Darlington and one each in the other areas and the six were being held at undisclosed police stations in the region. Forensic searches were also being carried out at the men's homes.