Communist guerrillas threaten Americans if U.S. joins war

BAGUIO, Philippines -- Communist rebels could target Americans for attack if U.S. troops take a more active role in the Philippine army's campaign against insurgency, according to a rebel statement Sunday.

The communist rebels claim the United States may be planning direct involvement in offensives against them after the U.S. State Department last week included the Communist Party and its armed wing, the New People's Army, on its list of foreign terrorist organizations.

"The U.S. is bound to suffer growing casualties among American troops, who are all vulnerable targets of the tactical offensives of the people's army," Communist Party spokesman Gregorio Rosal said in an e-mail to journalists in northern Baguio city.

"As casualties among American troops mount, the illusion of (the) invincibility of the U.S. high-tech war will be shattered," Rosal said.

The Philippine constitution bars foreign troops from joining combat operations. The country's defense secretary said the government refused an offer by Washington last year to have U.S. soldiers fight alongside Filipinos against the Muslim extremist Abu Sayyaf group.

Earlier this year, U.S. forces supported Philippine troops with weapons and six months of counterterrorism training to help wipe out the Abu Sayyaf, which has been linked loosely to al-Qaida. That help ended in July.

After the military campaign crippled the Abu Sayyaf in the impoverished south, the Philippine military stepped up its assaults against communist rebels, who have been waging a nationwide Marxist rebellion for about 34 years.

On Sunday, Philippine army soldiers clashed with about 50 communist guerrillas near a southern mountain town and killed at least two rebels, officials said.

The 30-minute gunfight in Baganga, in Davao Oriental province, injured two soldiers and three villagers, including two children, caught in the cross fire, army Maj. Johnny Macanas said.

Davao Oriental, about 595 miles southeast of Manila, has been a rebel hotbed for many years.

Rosal said Sunday that recently intensified military efforts against Marxist guerrillas and the "U.S. war of aggression in the Philippines are bound to fail."

U.S. officials have asked other countries to help identify and cut off financial and other support to the rebels, who have threatened and attacked Americans in the past, including a 1989 assassination of a U.S. colonel.

The Netherlands, where some rebel leaders have lived in exile for years while overseeing sporadic peace talks with the Philippine government, said it will comply with the U.S. request, joining the Bank of England and the Philippines.

Philippine officials said the financial clampdown would weaken the guerrillas considerably.

However, critics warn it will encourage crackdowns on legal left-wing groups that could violate human and democratic rights.