Local foreign policy experts warned the Philippines government yesterday against entering into a "suicide pact" with the United States by taking part in retaliatory strikes against suspected perpetrators of multiple attacks on the U.S. mainland last Tuesday.

Benito Lim, professor of the University of the Philippines' Asian Studies, said the strategic alliance of Manila with Washington DC should not overshadow the risk of allowing the Philippines to be the target of terrorists for supporting the U.S. in war.

"We have to think very carefully about how we are going to help the U.S. We should not commit ourselves to the point of national suicide," said Lim, in an interview with ABS-CBN news channel.
He pointed out that the main suspect in Tuesday's attacks, Osama bin Laden, has supporters among the Abu Sayyaf and other groups in the Philippines.

"We might provoke those sympathetic to Bin Laden here to bomb Metro Manila or elsewhere," he said. Clarita Carlos, president of the National Defence College, noted that the 1951 Philippines-U.S. Mutual Defence Treaty did not have a similar provision in the Nato calling for an automatic retaliation to an attack of one member-country.

The mutual defence treaty requires the Philippines to seek the approval of Congress before getting into the war with the U.S.

With that, the Philippines still has the luxury of weighing its options as to whether to involve itself militarily with the U.S. in this retaliatory offensive.

Nonetheless, Carlos stressed that the government should state clearly whether it is extending full support to the U.S. as a defence ally or not.

"We have been declaring we are strategic partners. For the most part, we are half-hearted about it. There is hesitation to put flesh to that alliance system with the continuing suspicion on the U.S. in lieu of the motives of the Americans.

"But if we are really strategic partners of the U.S., we should really go out for it. We cannot afford to be reluctant," she said.

Vice President and Foreign Affairs Secretary Teofisto Guin-gona Jr earlier said the Philippines is joining the U.S.-led international coalition in fighting Bin Laden's group of extremists.

He said the former U.S. military bases of Clark and Subic, north of Manila, will be opened as staging grounds for warships and military planes of the U.S. and its allies. Guingona said though how the Philippines will take part within the coalition is not yet certain. Carlos said the U.S. should also be "circumspect" about how it conducts this war against Bin Laden and possibly the dominant Taliban government of Afghanistan.

"The U.S. should look at the medium and long-term effect of its actions," she added.