US asks Philippine rebels to help hunt bombers

MANILA, Feb 17 (Reuters) The United States has asked a Muslim separatist group in the Philippines to help security forces track down radicals with links to a regional terror group, a US embassy spokesman said today.

Since February 2002, hundreds of US special forces troops had been deployed in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic country to help train Philippine troops fighting Abu Sayyaf, a small group of Muslim radicals with ties to Jemaah Islamiah, blamed for a spate of bomb attacks in the region.

US officials met this week week with senior members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a separatist group engaged in long drawn out peace talks with the Philippine government, said US embassy spokesman Matthew Lussenhop.

''We asked them to help find these wanted people or share some information that could lead to their arrests,'' he said.

He said wanted posters of several Abu Sayyaf militants and two Indonesian bombers who have taken refuge with them were given to the MILF.

Mohaqher Iqbal, the chief peace negotiator of the MILF, confirmed the meeting but said he could not remember the US embassy officials asking directly for help in tracking down several militants, including Indonesians Umar Patek and Dulmatin.

The two men are believed to be involved in the 2002 bombings on the Indonesian island resort of Bali that killed hundreds of people.

They are believed to be hiding out on the island of Jolo, a bastion of the Abu Sayyaf.

''There's an established mechanism for the US government to seek our help in the fight against terrorism,'' Iqbal told Reuters by telephone from his hideout on Mindanao, the southern mainland.

''We have long been cooperating with the Manila government to catch criminals hiding in our territories through the ad hoc joint action group.'' Iqbal said the U.S. embassy team asked the MILF to help facilitate humanitarian and civil affairs activities planned in some communities near MILF areas during joint US-Philippine military exercises planned in the next two weeks.

''They briefed us on the activities in the south, including the war on terrorism and we updated them on the peace process,'' said Iqbal, who also sits in the MILF eight-member jihad council.

The talks between the government and the MILF to end nearly 40 years of Islamic rebellion in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic country have been stalled since May 2006 over the size and wealth of a proposed ancestral homeland for 3 million Muslims.

REUTERS SP ND1540