Foreign Affairs Secretary Blas Ople urged the nation to "stay cool and collected," assuring that the government is closely monitoring the situation in Iraq and has in place contingency plans of evacuating Filipinos in the Middle East if the situation there worsens.

"The families of the country’s overseas workers in the region should not panic. On a signal from the Department of Foreign Affairs, all the Philippine embassies and consular posts will activate the contingency plans for the safety and protection of all Filipino nationals in the Middle East," Ople said in a statement posted at the DFA website.

Ople said what is in place right now are contingency plans for the Middle East that are being reviewed almost everyday.

The DFA secretary made this statement amid news reports that coalition aircrafts from the United States and Great Britain have attacked targets on an Iraqi airbase located southwest of Baghdad last Thursday.

These contingency plans, he said, have been updated by an inter-agency committee in Manila and in the individual diplomatic posts throughout the Middle East.

Ople said the government is in firm control and will not be caught flat-footed for new emergencies in the Middle East.

Last Friday, Ople told Malacaņang reporters that the government is already aware of the number of Filipinos in each of the country that may be affected by a possible attack in Iraq, saying that the plan also includes the designation of holding areas for any evacuees.

"We know where to put them in terms of holding area, if there is a sudden eruption of war there in the Middle East," Ople said.

He said those in Israel and Lebanon, for example, will be transported immediately and quickly to Cyprus while those in Iraq and Kuwait will be moved to Amman, Jordan.

Ople added that the Philippine ambassador to Saudi Arabia had told him that it will not be necessary to relocate the Filipinos there to another country but instead to another area of the Saudi kingdom which is beyond the range of the Scud missiles that may come from Iraq.

He explained that the Scud missiles were unable to travel farther than Riyadh in 1991 but Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has been improving his Iraq’s arsenals and has reportedly acquired long-range missiles from North Korea which has a range of 3,000 kilometers.

Three down, 18 more to go.

The government’s bid to wipe out 21 kidnap-for-ransom (KFR) gangs in a year’s time has gained headway with the neutralization of at least three big notorious KFR groups operating in Mindanao and Luzon.

In a month after the Philippine National Police (PNP) created its Police Anti-Crime and Emergency Response (PACER) on July 15 this year, the police had killed Mindanao-based Pentagon KFR leader Muhamad Faisal Marohombsar and arrested key heads of the Fajardo and Bucala KFR gangs operating in Central Luzon.

A report on achievements of targets set by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in her second State of the Nation Address (SONA) dated September 3 noted that the successes were brought about by the cooperation given by civilian informants who told on the KFR groups.

The President, in several instances, cited the speed by which the PNP had been solving recent KFR cases. She also noted that all of the victims were safely recovered.

She likewise gave credit to several civilians who helped police track down and get kidnap groups.

The SONA report said the government has moved to give rewards to informants to bolster its information gathering thrusts on suspected KFR groups. This has resulted in an updated KFR database.

But even with the reward system, the government continued to receive the unconditional cooperation of peace-loving citizens who believed in getting rid of crimes as a means to gain peace and development.

The PNP has also conducted various training programs to discourage or respond to kidnapping incidents.

Last July 16 to 20, at least 27 policemen finished a workshop-seminar on hostage negotiation. Later, PACER tracker teams completed a training program on case operations management.