Manila says Muslim converts still pose threats

MANILA, May 31 (Reuters) A Philippine group of radical Muslim converts with suspected links to foreign and local militant groups still poses a serious threat despite the arrest of its two top leaders, a senior counter-terrorism official said.

Ricardo Blancaflor of the Philippine counter-terrorism task force said today that the Rajah Solaiman Movement continued to plot attacks in Manila despite the arrest of its leader, Hilarion del Rosario Santos, and his number two in 2005.

''The threat has not diminished,'' Blancaflor told reporters after the US embassy awarded 500,000 dollars to two Filipinos who tipped police off about the whereabouts of Santos, alias Ahmed Islam.

The informants' identities were not revealed.

''They deserve the reward,'' US Ambassador to the Philippines Kristie Kenny told reporters, saying Washington's programme to pay tipsters to track down and arrests militants across the globe was an effective weapon against terrorism.

There are estimated to be more than 100,000 converts to Islam in the Philippines, Asia's largest Catholic country, and analysts have said the emergence of a militant movement among them could increase bombings in northern Philippines.

Attacks have traditionally been focused in the country's southern region, where militant groups are fighting for independence for around six million born Muslims.

''It may presage more attacks in the northern Philippines, particularly the urban heartland around Manila,'' said the International Crisis Group (ICG), a political risk consultancy, in a December report.

The Rajah Solaiman Movement, working closely with Muslim extremist groups Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiah, was blamed for a ferry bombing that killed more than 100 people near Manila bay in February 2004.

Philippine security officials have also blamed the group for a bomb inside a commuter bus in Manila's financial district in February 2005 that killed six people.

They said the arrests of Santos and de Vera in southern Philippines last year may have disrupted a fresh plot to detonate a 1,000-lb truck bomb in Manila's tourist district in Malate.

REUTERS SHB PM1649