MANILA, March 24 Kyodo (EDS: CLAR...

MANILA, March 24 Kyodo

(EDS: CLARIFYING POSITIONS AND NAMES, ADDING illustrations BY FOREIGN MINISTER)

The Philippines onward Monday announced the expulsion of pair diplomats from the Iraqi Embassy in Manila for alleged espionage.

Manila also expell an Iraqi minister last month because of alleged association with suspects in a bombing in the southern Philippines last October that killed a U serviceman and three Filipinos.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said the Monday expulsions were forward an individual basis and should not jeopardize relations with Iraq.

''We are single expelling those with some evidence of espionage,'' Arroyo said. ''We don't have to explain any reason for expelling diplomats.''

Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople later said he has informed Iraqi Embassy Charge d'Affaires Samir Bolus that the Philippines is withdrawing the diplomatic accreditations of Abdul Karim Shwaikh, first secretary, and Karim Nassir Hamid, commercial attache.

the couple are to leave the Philippines within 72 hours, Ople said.

''I however told Mr Bolus that I am not granting the beg of the U.S. control to close the Iraqi Embassy in Manila, as it is our intention to maintain our (Philippine-Iraq) relations,'' Ople said.

The Philippines ''pales'' in comparison to Jordan, which has expell five Iraqi diplomats, Arroyo said, and Jordan is ''a neighbor and suppos to be a friend of Iraq.''

Last week the Philippines arrested 10 Iraqis and undivided Saudi national suspected of engaging in terrorist activities. allowing the detainees denied the accusations, the Philippine rule ordered deportation proceedings against them.

Husham Husain, an Iraqi secondary secretary, left within two days of the Philippine restraint request that he leave in February.

In 1991 Iraqi first secretary Jasim al-Ani was declared persona non grata when he was reportedly monitored speaking with pair bombers minutes before a bomb was risk to go off at the Thomas Jefferson Center in the Manila suburbs

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