Army responsible for many Philippine killings-UN

MANILA, Feb 21 (Reuters) The Philippine military appears to have been responsible for many of the hundreds of extra-judicial killings in the country, a UN investigator said today.

Philip Alston, an Australian law professor and UN special rapporteur on extra-judicial executions, delivered the strong indictment of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's government after a 10-day investigation in the Southeast Asian nation.

Local rights group Karapatan has said more than 800 people, most of them left-wing activists, have been murdered or reported missing since Arroyo came to power in 2001.

The military says most of the deaths could be attributed to internal fighting in the communist New People's Army (NPA).

Alston said he did not know how many had died, but added: ''I am certain the number is high enough to be distressing.

''The impact of even a limited number of killings of the type alleged is corrosive in many ways,'' he told a news conference.

''It intimidates vast numbers of civil society actors, it sends a message of vulnerability to all but the most well-connected, and it severely undermines the political discourse which is central to a resolution of the problems confronting this country.'' The government said it was concerned about the killings and the fact it had invited the United Nations to investigate was proof it wanted to act on the matter.

''No right-thinking government or leader will tolerate such things happening and that's the reason why we're looking into it,'' Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita told reporters. ''It is the policy of the state to look into it and put a stop to it.'' Ermita said Manila would finally release a damning report by a government-created inquiry into the murders on Thursday.

Retired Supreme Court Justice Jose Melo, who headed the probe, told Reuters last month that elements in the military were behind many of the killings but, until now, Arroyo had refused to release his findings, triggering a wave of criticism.

ALL-OUT WAR Alston laid much of the blame on the military.

''The armed forces remain in a state of almost total denial of its need to respond effectively and authentically to the significant number of killings which have been convincingly attributed to them,'' he said.

However, he said there did not appear to be a state sanction for the killings: ''I do not believe that there's a policy at the top designed to direct that these killings to take place.'' But Crispin Beltran, detained leader of the left-wing political party Anakpawis, told Reuters the government was targeting leftist activists ahead of congressional polls in May.

''It's a strategy to annihilate the opposition before, during and even after the elections,'' Beltran, who is being held under police custody in a Manila hospital, said in an interview.

The Philippines, also fighting Muslim insurgencies, has been battling the NPA since 1969 in a conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people. Arroyo declared an ''all-out war'' on the communist insurgents last year.

Military chief General Hermogenes Esperon has told Reuters that communist rebels are the top security threat to the nation but said troops did not use extra-judicial killings to counter them. He said he will prosecute any soldier found doing so.

Alston said the military must begin to investigate the killings seriously and ''not in a way that simply protects its own officers''. The military's claims of an internal purge within the New People's Army were unconvincing, he said.

Arroyo has called for the creation of special courts to deal with the killings and asked the armed forces to update its rules on command responsibility. But Alston said more was needed.

''The various measures ordered by the president in response to Melo constitute important first steps, but there is a huge amount that remains to be done,'' he said.

REUTERS PDM KP1720