Philippine prosecutors said Monday they plan to seek subpoenas to question six US soldiers accused of gang-raping a Filipino woman in a van after joint military exercises this month.

Prudencio Jalandoni, prosecutor for Olongapo City north of Manila, said a preliminary investigation had been set for November 15-25 and that the suspects would be given 10 days to file counter affidavits.

The six soldiers, whose colleagues aboard the USS Essex left the Philippines after the military exercises, remain in US custody but have not been charged with any offences.

The alleged attack on a 22-year-old student in the Subic Bay area on November 1 has churned up anger about the US role in the security of the Philippines and put the Manila government in a difficult position as a close ally to Washington.

The United States, which ruled the Philippines as a colony for nearly half a century, was ordered to close its last military base in the country in the early 1990s but continues to train and advise local troops under a visiting forces agreement.

Leftist and women's groups have called for the agreement to be scrapped and the six US soldiers to be brought under Philippine jurisdiction.

"There will be no whitewash in the investigation and we shall insist on our sovereign prerogatives," President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's spokesman said Monday.

Paul Jones, the charge d'affaires at the US Embassy, said Monday the six suspects would be available for questioning by Philippine investigators as the process moved forward.

"We want to co-operate with the Philippine authorities to make sure justice is done," Jones told reporters after meeting Alberto Romulo, the Philippine foreign secretary.

"A US investigation is going on and we will follow the US course of justice and the US law," he said.

Source: China Daily