MANILA, Philippines? (UPDATE) The Philippine National Police (PNP) has no negotiating unit that would handle hostage-taking situations, according to the chief negotiator in the August 23 crisis at the Quirino Grandstand.

Police Superintendent Orlando Yebra's normal role is as the legal officer of the Manila police district, but when required he acts as the force's chief hostage negotiator, he told an inquiry into the botched rescue.

"I don't have a designation or a title appointing me a negotiator, I just perform this when needed by the situation," he said.

Yebra's official designation is as chief of the legal department of the Manila Police District. He has taken hostage-negotiating courses in the United States.

?The PNP does not have an officially created negotiating unit unlike the SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics)... the negotiating unit does not really exist until now, officially,? Yebra told the Internal Investigation and Review Committee (IIRC) on Monday.

"Officially there is no negotiation unit yet in the PNP (national police)," he added.

Yebra said that he had already proposed to the PNP hierarchy the creation of a specialized unit as well as having a negotiating manual since 2007 but the police leadership had apparently sat on it.

Yebra also clarified before the IIRC that previous resource persons, particularly his superiors, Chief Superintendents Leocadio Santiago and Rodolfo Magtibay, have been testifying about a crisis management committee set up that has not been activated.

In this structure, the police crisis management task group and the civilian crisis management committee were both on top of the crisis situation.

Yebra said he believed that during the August 23 crisis, the old structure was in place, wherein the civilian crisis management committee supervised the on-site commander, also known as the ground commander.

During the day-long siege last month he was given no intelligence support, Yebra said, with only one officer backing him up and neither of them having a complete picture of the hostage-taking even hours after the crisis began.

Yebra said that the national police had supposedly assigned him several men taken from other units, but they never contacted him.

"If there was an intelligence team working the area... (its presence) was not properly advised to me," he said.

"That (intelligence team) would have been crucial to the success of the operation.

"It is from this group that I can get other information... the background of the hostages, the structure of the bus and probably how much litres of fuel were left in the tank," Yebra said.

He said a police psychologist could have helped him assess the state of mind of ex-police officer Rolando Mendoza when he hijacked the bus with 22 Hong Kong tourists and three Filipinos aboard on August 23.

The visitors were on the last day of a sight-seeing tour of Manila when Mendoza hijacked their bus and held them hostage for about 12 hours, in a bid to be cleared of extortion charges and regain his job.

In a bloody end to the siege eight of the foreigners were killed during a botched rescue seen live on television.

Yebra's testimony provided the latest in a list of errors during the operation.

City and police officials who earlier appeared before the inquiry admitted to other lapses, including leaving their posts when the gunman began shooting and not using the force's best-trained commando unit to take part in the assault.