President Joseph Estrada backed a proposed multilateral meeting that the United States will broker to discuss rival claims to the Spratly Islands. Manila claims the buildings erected by China on Filipino-claimed Mischief Reef are for military use. Beijing, which says the buildings are fishermen's shelters, is opposed to a meeting. Armed forces chief Gen. Joselin Nazareno increased patrols in southern cities to combat escalating violence by Muslim guerrillas. Since the start of the year, bomb attacks on crowds and buses in the southern island of Mindanao have killed at least 15 people and wounded more than 100.
Officials blame Muslim groups for all the attacks.
In a letter to its Taipei counterpart, Beijing's Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait said that a visit later this year by the association's chairman, Wang Daohan, should take up political as well as economic issues. The North and South, China and the United States began talks in Geneva aimed at forging a permanent peace treaty for the peninsula. I hero Yod Sangrungruang, who is the last surviving member of a Siamese force sent to France to fight with the Allies, was presented with France's highest award, the Legion d'Honneur. Militant group Shiv Sena had earlier vowed to disrupt the tour to demonstrate against what it calls Pakistan's support for a Muslim insurgency in Kashmir. Sena activists had earlier damaged the venue for one of the matches in Delhi.