MANILA, Philippines—Filipino and American officials Sunday rejected claims by some civilian groups that US soldiers had taken part in combat operations against Moro rebels and that their prolonged presence indicated they were staying in the country permanently.

An undisclosed number of American soldiers have been in the Philippines since 2002 under the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) between the two countries.

‘Never involved’

“US troops are never involved in combat,” US Embassy spokesperson Rebecca Thompson told the Philippine Daily Inquirer, reiterating previous Washington statements on the issue.

“We don’t have US forces permanently in the Philippines, so they come and go. They are here at the invitation of the Philippines. We have no bases or plans to base in the Philippines,” Thompson said.

Officials say the American soldiers are in the country as part of the Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines (JSOTF-P), a unit from the Hawaii-based Special Operations Command-Pacific (Socpac), to provide advise and technical know-how to the Philippine military.

Socpac officials said in a briefing last year that the Americans were keeping away from combat operations as “a hard and fast rule” and as “a clear policy.”

They said all US troop movements and activities were coordinated with the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP).

A top Philippine Air Force (PAF) official in Mindanao Sunday said that US air presence in southern Philippines was limited to providing airlifts to the American contingent in the area.

Maj. Gen. Hernanie Perez, commander of the PAF’s 3rd Air Division, said the US military maintained a modest fleet of transport planes at the Zamboanga air base to ferry personnel and logistics.

“They only have medium lift aircraft for logistics and administrative flights … none for combat,” Perez said.

US fleet in Zamboanga

Perez said the United States had been keeping a small fleet of Bell-214 helicopters, C-12 medium lift cargo planes and Beechcraft transporters at an expanded ramp of the PAF base in Zamboanga, and that there were times when he would see “six to eight planes” there.

“We have more [aircraft] because that (air base) is where we maintain our planes,” he said.

The US planes are parked at a ramp area that was expanded months back with the Philippine military’s permission, Perez said.

The Zamboanga base is one of four staging areas of PAF air strikes against rebel forces in the south and serves as maintenance hub for the military’s air power.

Romulo-Kenney accord

The AFP deputy spokesperson, Maj. Ramon Zagala, denied that US troops in Mindanao were taking part in actual field combat.

“We will never allow that. That is crystal clear,” Zagala said on the phone.

The US soldiers are in the Philippines upon Manila’s invitation under a security arrangement signed by Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo and US Ambassador Kristie Kenney, Zagala said.

Under that arrangement, according to Zagala, US troops take nontraditional military roles, such as helping in disaster relief operations, training and advising Filipino soldiers, and providing technical assistance to counter terrorism, primarily by helping the military in intelligence gathering.

Zagala said these were all what the US soldiers were doing on Philippine soil. “They move as we move,” he said.

The US soldiers keep to military camps when told to stay there by Filipino soldiers, Zagala said, citing what happened in North Cotabato last month when Moro Islamic Liberation Front guerrillas under Commander Kato occupied several villages.

‘They follow our orders’

“The US soldiers were in the 6th Infantry Division on an advisory role in a civil affairs project funded by the USAID (United States Agency for International Development),” Zagala said.

“They were told not to go outside the camp while there was fighting going on and they followed what [we] said.”

Aside from helping in intelligence gathering against suspected terrorists, US troops help in the evacuation of Filipino soldiers wounded in combat using their own helicopters, Zagala said.

Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said the other day that the US military presence did not impair Philippine sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Ermita said that after the pullout by the United States of its military bases in the Philippines in 1991, the VFA was needed to help in the country’s development, including its military capability.