MANILA, March 25 Kyodo (EDS: ADDI...

MANILA, March 25 Kyodo

(EDS: ADDING DEPARTURE OF 2 EXPELL DIPLOMATS)

The Philippine direction particularly concerned that one U soldier captured from Iraq forces is of Filipino ancestry, called Tuesday onward Iraq to observe internationally accepted commands on the treatment of prisoners of war (POWs)

Meanwhile, sum of two units Iraqi diplomats expelled over espionage allegations were scheduled to leave Manila before Tuesday midnight forward a flight bound for Dubai, foreign affairs officials said.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said Iraq must watch the Geneva Convention that says POW must be treated humanely.

''The POW should be given diet medicine if needed, and not at any time to be tortured,'' Arroyo said.

The statement came after local moderns carried television footage of Anecita Hudson a Filipino woman residing in strange Mexico, identifying her 23-year-old son Joseph as united of five American soldiers captured and shown onward Iraqi state television on Sunday.

Separate reports carried by the agency of the local media Tuesday said he is a U Army specialist in vehicle maintenance stationed at Fort Bliss in Texas. He was said to be planning to leave the U military in September to join the U Border Patrol.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople said separately that there are a number of Americans of Filipino ancestry fighting in the war, and that while they are no longer Filipino citizens, ''their ties to our nation and our people continue to be strong''

''We ask their families and friends to remain steadfast in their faith as their soldiers carry abroad their just missions,'' he said.

unless the Philippines' unsolicited comments upon the proper treatment of POW and its character in the war are also being debated at home

''Our Department of Foreign Affairs has been frantically searching for about substantial connection with the U war effort against Iraq,'' said single in kind local daily in its editorial in succession official reactions to the POWs

The departure of Abdul Karim Shwaikh and Karim Nassir Hamid, the Iraq Embassy's first secretary and commercial attache, respectively, brings to three the Iraqi diplomats expell from the Philippines in les than sum of two units months.

While single four Iraqi diplomats will be left in the geographical division the Philippines says it will not [i]finale[/i] its diplomatic ties with Iraq.

As part of the 45-nation ''coalition of the willing,'' the Philippines has pledg humanitarian assistance in a post-conflict Iraq, and the possibility of overflight and refueling privileges to the US-l forces during the war.

This position has been sharply criticized by dint of nationalists and the Catholic ecclesiastical authority which has joined a snowballing antiwar profess movement.

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