Manila's Bureau of Immigrations and the Aviation Security Group (ASG) raised a red alert at 85 domestic and international airports in the country following reports of the entry of a Lebanese national to undertake terrorist attacks against U.S. interests.

Sources added that U.S. embassy-based agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI,) who have set up a nationwide dragnet in Manila and other entry points in the country, sought the assistance of their local counterparts to look for the Lebanese national, identified as Ahmad Yaser Ismail.

He is believed to lead a group of fighters funded by Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden, to rendezvous with local saboteurs to undertake the anti-U.S. plot in the Philippines.

Sources said top American anti-terrorist experts had reportedly provided the Malacanang Palace with the identity of a Lebanese national who has plans to sneak into the Philippines and fund or assist in a plot to bomb American and Israeli interests in the Philippines.

Aviation Security Group Chief Marcelo Ele said his agency was charged to be on red alert for 24 hours, adding ASG agents were ordered to coordinate closely with the Bureau of Immigrations in the monitoring of passenger arrivals from the Middle East.

Immigration Commissioner Andrea Domingo said: "Our intelligence officers are on red alert status at the country's four international airports." She refused to confirm reports that U.S. embassy officials had requested assistance in the monitoring of passengers arriving from the Middle East.

The U.S. earlier said that Bin Laden had been funding the hostage-taking Abu Sayyaf Group in the southern Philippines. He was accused as the mastermind in the bombing of two U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania which killed 250 people in 1998.

The Abu Sayyaf Group, believed to be funded by Bin Laden, kidnapped three American nationals in Palawan, southwestern Philippines on May 27. When the group held U.S. national Jeffrey Schilling in Jolo last August, it demanded the release of three Arabs who were imprisoned for the bombing of New York's World Trade Centre which killed six people and injured 1,000 others on February 26, 1993.

The group asked former president Joseph Estrada to ask former U.S. president Bill Clinton to release the Arabs who were imprisoned in the U.S., for the release of some 20 mostly foreign hostages who were kidnapped in Malaysia in April 2000. The U.S. never responded.

Apart from the Abu Sayyaf, the military has linked Osama bin Laden to Nur Misuari, chairman of the mainstream Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) which forged a pro-autonomy peace settlement with the government in 1996. Denying this, Misuari said he could not have met Bin Laden in Saudi Arabia because the latter is banned there.