MANILA (AFP) - Osama bin Laden, the main suspect in deadly terrorist attacks in the United States, continues to supply arms, training and other logistics support to the Abu Sayyaf rebel group, the Philippine military chief said today.
"There is definitely this link," chief of staff General Diomedio Villanueva told AFP in an interview.
"It's not only gut feelings but I really feel certain that they couldn't have operated this long and they couldn't have sustained themselves for so long a time if not for the material, leadership and training support" from Osama's al-Qaeda network," he explained.
It is the first time that a high ranking Filipino official has confirmed that the Muslim rebel group and millionaire Osama's al-Qaeda network were still maintaining their links which were established in the early 1990s.
After the September 11 terror attacks on US installations, for which Osama is the prime suspect, officials in Manila had downplayed any talk of recent links between the two groups.
It had been thought that the Saudi millionaire cut off links after the Abu Sayyaf degenerated into a kidnap-for-ransom gang.
'Fingerprints of Osama'
Villanueva said recent kidnappings by the Abu Sayyaf guerrillas bore "the fingerprints of the the al-Qaeda organisation of Osama bin Laden which will not stop at anything.
"Beheading innocent victims, bombings and even raping of innocent Christian women - they want to further ethnic religious divide in order to further sow disunity and terror," Villanueva said.
The Abu Sayyaf, whose name means 'Bearer of the Sword', has beheaded many of its kidnap victims to press demands ranging from hard cash to a separate Islamic state in the southern third of the Philippine archipelago.
The group, founded in the early 1990s by a young firebrand preacher Abdurajak Janjalani who reportedly was trained in Afghanistan, is currently holding at least two Americans and 16 Filipinos hostage in Basilan island.
It claimed in July to have beheaded a third American from a group kidnapped in the western tourist island resort of Palawan two months earlier.
Asked to elaborate on the flow of Osama's arms into the Philippines, Villanueva said: "There were some arms interceptions and information of arms landing which we tried to verify.
"There were also some captured firearms which we were able to collect after so many years of fighting with the Abu Sayyaf," he said.
Villanueva's remarks followed a disclosure by President Gloria Arroyo that a brother-in-law of Osama had written a letter to her, offering to help free the Americans and other hostages.
Letter dismissed
Mohammad Jamal Khalifa, who once led a Muslim foundation in the Philippines that allegedly channelled funds to the Abu Sayyaf and other guerrillas operating in the south, "wrote a letter offering to help get the hostages out," Arroyo told reporters late Thursday.
The letter by Khalifa, received in July, had been handed over to security officials, she said.
Villanueva said the letter could have been part of "psychological war" by the Osama group.
"If they want the hostages released, they can just do it, put pressure on their cohorts in the Abu Sayaff group to release them," he said.
Asked whether Osma could enter the Philippines as he is now fleeing the wrath of the United States for allegedly plotting the attacks in New York and Washington, Villanueva said the Saudi tycoon could be easily detected here.
"I guess an Arab will stand up like a sore thumb in the Philippines. I don't think Osama can stay unnoticed for a long time," he said.
He also called for an increase in the exchange of intelligence information among the military of the Philippines and neighbours Malaysia and Indonesia to combat what he called the threat posed by Islamic fundamentalists.
"We all feel threatened by Islamic fundamentalists. They know no borders and they just operate freely and have their own political objectives," he said.
