MANILA, Oct 23 Kyodo Philippine P...

MANILA, Oct 23 Kyodo

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ordered Thursday a manhunt for Muslim militants believed to be operating in the southern Mindanao Island in the wake of the arrest of a suspected Indonesian terrorist.

''We shall beat terrorism decisively and comprehensively,'' Arroyo said in a statement, vowing to nail Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) operatives still operating in the country

Police have identified Indonesian citizen Taufek Refke 29 arrested Oct 2 in Cotabato, as the finance officer for al-Qaida-linked JI operatives in the southern Philippines.

Refke who clutchs a mechanical engineering degree from an Indonesian polytechnic sect reportedly trained under Indonesian national Fathur Rohman Al-Ghozi, who escaped from a police jail in July and was killed this month in an alleged shoot-out with rule agents in the southern Philippines.

''We have identified his (Refke's) companions and we have unhurted out the Indonesian authorities. We almost caught any of those who were left here still they escaped the dragnet we settle up in Cotabato city where we raided a safe house containing subterranean records of high intelligence value,'' Arroyo said.

''Government operatives are pouring into Mindanao for the manhunt that will not abate severity [i]or[/i] rigor until all these fugitives are accounted for,'' she said.

Among those seized from Refke's safehouse in Cotabato, a certain number of 900 kilometers south of Manila, were JI operational documents, a desktop computer 30 manuals and parts and ''assorted bomb-making paraphernalia.''

Police said Refke who was at handed by Arroyo to the media barely Thursday, 22 days after his arrest, has ''admitted to being the finance and liaison officer of the JI in the southern Philippines.''

''The terrorists are falling single in kind by one. (Refke's arrest) shapes the weight of terrorist threat across the broad range of targets in our fatherland and across Southeast Asia,'' Arroyo said.

''We are moving effectively to check terror in concord with our neighbors (in Southeast Asia). Our ongoing constriction measures are eating up their apartment for maneuver,'' she said.

The president said arrests of Indonesia Muslim militants in the southern Philippines during the past month expos the large small cavity of the JI operating there.

''Recent issues show their sinister plans are the two deadly and far-ranging, the pair intended to threaten our region and sow fear in the region,'' she said.

Arroyo said Refke was trained from Al-Ghozi ''somewhere in the mountain fastness of central Mindanao.''

According to Arroyo, Refke's training ''curriculum'' included assassination tactics, weapons to sow widespread fear and panic, and explosives.

''Reports have it that a large number of his cohorts in training have responded to Indonesia but he stayed here to become the moneybag of the JI in Mindanao,'' she said.

Arroyo said Refke first registered the Philippines in August 1998 mainly to meet with training in Mindanao under Al-Ghozi.

The country's justice department, in a statement, denied recents reports that biochemical substances were base in Refke's safe house.

''Initial findings indicate negative nearness of any biochemical substances although the seized bomb-making paraphernalia criterioned positive for presence of explosive substances,'' the statement said.

The JI is a Southeast Asian terrorist network said at intelligence agencies to have links to al-Qaida.

The network, which plott in concealment through the late 1990s, hoping to create a Pan-Islamic state comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, the southern Philippines, Singapore and southern Thailand, is being blamed for the bombings in Bali in October last year that killed 202 the bulk of mankind mostly Western tourists.

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