US Philippines end hearts and minds exercise

BATO-BATO, Philippines, Mar 3 (Reuters) Villagers sang ancient tribal songs and schoolgirls waved paper flags today to mark the end of US-Philippine military exercises on an island that is a bastion of Islamic rebels.

The annual Balikatan (shoulder-to-shoulder) exercises did not include war game scenarios this year. Instead, the two militaries have built roads and schoolhouses and provided healthcare to thousands of people in the southern Philippines, a region riven by poverty and insurgency.

The strategy appears to be giving U.S. forces much needed dividends after reverses in Iraq and an escalation of violence in Afghanistan.

''The legacy of the American people is not these projects alone, these school buildings or this road,'' said Don Loong, a provincial administrator speaking at the closing ceremony in Bato-Bato, a seaside village on Jolo island.

''It is giving us again hope, by showing us that peace is possible. We do not want the peace of silence; we want the peace of development.'' Jolo, a kidney-bean shaped island off the coast of Mindanao in the southern Philippines, is one of the poorest areas in the country and the headquarters of the Abu Sayyaf, the deadliest of several insurgent groups in the Roman Catholic country.

Both militaries say the Abu Sayyaf has been struck a body blow since US special forces troops began giving training and intelligence to about 8,000 Philippine soldiers on the almost entirely Muslim island.

The closing ceremonies, attended by Philippine Defence Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane, military chief Gen Hermogenes Esperon and US Ambassador Kristie Kenney, went off peacefully, but security was tight in the village west of Jolo town.

Scores of soldiers with automatic rifles, machine-guns and armoured cars, ringed Bato-Bato, a collection of shacks on stilts and some concrete houses set between the sea and banana plantations, coconut palms and bamboo forests.

GOOD MORNING Over 100 schoolgirls in green skirts and white blouses ringed the gravel path down to the sea, chanting ''Good Morning'' and waving Philippine and US flags under the fierce sun.

A local choir sang an ancient song of the Tausug tribe, about love and loneliness on Bud Tumantangis, or the crying mountain, a cloud-shrouded hill towering over the village.

Kenney, the US envoy, said the social service projects started during the three-week exercises would be continued.

''We are going to keep going,'' she said. ''This has been for the armed forces of the United States an extraordinary experience.'' Captain Randy Hooper, a US marine who has served in Iraq and was in charge of the projects in Bato-Bato, said the Philippines was a welcome change.

''The locals are so friendly and so open,'' he said.

''We carry weapons,'' he added, patting a pistol under his camouflage tunic. ''But we don't have to be aggressive at all.'' Still, Bato-Bato is a desperately poor village, with most shacks built of bamboo and straw. An open sewer runs down to the sea, and the village square is marked by a solitary basketball backboard with fading paint and a rusted hoop.

Villagers, however, see some improvement in recent years.

''I have a salary now,'' said Ali Sami Omar, a 26-year-old who has found employment as a garbage collector under a US-funded project. ''This is a normal situation.'' But the threat of the Abu sayyaf is ever-present.

Under a tarpaulin stretched over bamboo poles, local officials were handing out posters of an Abu Sayyaf leader, Radullan Sahiron, promising a 0,000 reward for information leading to his capture.

''Your identity will be guarded,'' it promised.

REUTERS SP KN1516