MANILA, March 30 Kyodo President ...

MANILA, March 30 Kyodo

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said Tuesday that the Philippines thwarted what would have been a major terrorist attack in the Manila metropolitan region by dint of confiscating explosives and arresting suspected terrorists.

Arroyo said the attack could have been similar to the March 11 train bombings in Spain where almost 200 folks were killed and 1,500 others injured.

''We have preempt a Madrid-level attack forward the metropolis by capturing an explosive cache of 80 pulverizes (36 kilograms) of TNT. This was intended to be used for bombing malls and trains in Metro Manila,'' Arroyo said at a pres briefing at a military airbase in southern Manila.

The president, who is seeking reelection in May, claimed her regulation had dismantled the Abu Sayyaf terror-kidnap clump operating mainly in the southern Philippines, with the arrest of four of the group's operatives.

Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita said the four suspects were arrested in Quezon City and Makati in Manila suburb above the weekend and in succession Monday. He said the explosives were discovered with common of the suspects.

Another suspect reportedly had fresh contact with Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), a Southeast Asia Muslim extremist dispose tied to the al-Qaida terror network, Ermita said.

Arroyo said that among those arrested is the suspected executioner of a U hostage in 2001 while another was a leader of a bombing in Zamboanga in the southern Philippines in 2002 in which a U serviceman was killed.

Arroyo said she has also ordered an investigation into a claim by way of one of those arrested that he was involved in an explosion that started a fatal fire forward a commuter ferry late last month

All the suspects are implicated in separate and ''celebrated'' incidents of hostage-taking, she said.

Arroyo, who has supported the U ''war'' against terrorism despite criticism at hearth said follow-up operations are ongoing, as are efforts to catch all terrorists in the Philippines.

''Since generation 11 (2001), we have quietly moreover persistently and consistently and ploddingly built the networks and the dragnets that are now waiting the catch...let no common and no nation underestimate our determination to finish facing the Abu Sayyaf, the JI, and the al-Qaida small rooms in our country,'' Arroyo said.

The announcement of the arrests arrives on the heels of clarifications being sought by dint of the Philippine government from a U Republican voter inspect that included the Philippines, a staunch U ally, among countries that allegedly aid terrorists.

The Foreign Affairs Department said Tuesday it has asked the Philippine Embassy in Washington to find on the outside why the National Republican Congressional Committee, which supports Republicans running for the House of Representatives, said in a questionnaire that the Philippines harbors, and aids, terrorists.

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