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Libya Urges Crushing the Abu Sayyaf
by Kazi Mahmood
JAKARTA, Aug 3 (IslamOnline & News agencies) - The kidnapping of 21 new hostages and the beheading of four of them Thursday in Basilan has had adverse effects on the Abu Sayyaf.
Libya, a country that had supported the group, and negotiated the release of several hostages last year, has condemned the group and said they must be crushed.
Sources in Manila said this represented a blanket approval of the actions of the Filipino military against the Abu Sayyaf.
The Libyans have been protective of the Abu Sayyaf, urging the Philippines government to negotiate with them instead of attacking them militarily.
This development, observers said, could lead to the total annihilation of the Abu Sayyaf, whom had depended on Libyan support to maintain contact with Filipino negotiators.
Salem Adam, Libya's ambassador to Manila, described the Abu Sayyaf as a group of bandits and ruled out any further negotiations with them.
"We have no solution but to crush them. Abu Sayyaf is a bandit group. They are doing nothing but kidnapping and asking ransom and murder.
"They are using Islam as an umbrella. We are not going to talk to them," he told AFP.
Libya played a supporting role in the "inking" of an accord between the two rival Muslim factions in Mindanao, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).
Salem was in Malaysia to the witness the signing of an agreement between the two former rival Moro groups. Indonesia, Libya and Malaysia, all members of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), helped in the deal.
In August 2000, the Khaddafy Charity Organization, run by Libyan leader Moammar Khaddafy 's son Seif, had financed the liberation of 21 Western hostages held by the Abu Sayyaf in Jolo.
Presently, the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan are still holding at least two Americans and 19 Filipinos seized in a kidnapping spree that began on May 27th.
They earlier killed four Filipino hostages and claimed to have beheaded one American, although the body of the foreigner has yet to be found. They are still holding two Americans, a couple.
Several key members of the group were arrested in July by the Philippines military in a crackdown in both Basilan and Jolo, in Sulu province.
The so-called "Islamic" separatists beheaded four hostages out of a fresh batch of at least 21 Filipinos abducted in a midnight raid in the southern Philippines, police said Friday.
Reacting to the report of new hostages seized by the Abu Sayyaf, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said the bandit group was lashing back because of the intense pressure from the military crackdown.
Arroyo said in her weekly press conference that the Abu Sayyaf was enacting retaliatory or diversionary actions - and not punitive action - by seizing hostages.
"That's what war is. War is never one-sided," she said.
She said that the government would not swerve from their current policy of a military crackdown, adding that they cannot be blackmailed from not going after the extremist group.
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