RP Resumes Peace Talks With MILF  

Agence France Presse, Arab News

PORT DICKSON, Malaysia, 19 April 2005 — Negotiations to end a decades-old Muslim separatist rebellion in the southern Philippines resumed yesterday as government and rebel delegations tackled territorial issues at a meeting in Malaysia.

The talks, set down for three days, are an exploratory start to what are expected to be tough negotiations between Manila and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a spokesman for the Malaysian organizers said.

“This is the beginning of a tough agenda on the ancestral domain. It is to explore each others’ position,” he said.

The 12,000-strong MILF has been waging a rebellion since 1978, demanding that Manila give it control over its “ancestral domain” and the people living in it.

The MILF’s reference to its “ancestral domain” traditionally means the whole of Mindanao island, once ruled by a succession of Islamic sultanates until they were subdued by western powers who conquered the country.

The mineral-rich island makes up a third of the mainly-Catholic Philippines and is home to the country’s Muslim minority.

The Malaysian official said the talks were held in a “cordial” environment, with delegates from both sides shaking hands and eating together. They each presented their positions before separating to discuss their responses.

“The Manila government and the MILF are very pragmatic about the talks,” he said. “They will discuss four elements. The first one is territorial aspects, second the concept of the domains, third the natural resources and fourth governance.

“The meeting is technical in nature. Both sides are hopeful for progress in the meeting.” The official said there could be further technical meetings after this one, before the next phase of a formal conference leading to the signing of a peace agreement.

The delegations, meeting at an hotel in this port city some 130 kilometers south of the capital Kuala Lumpur, have reportedly agreed to avoid commenting on the progress of the talks until a statement is issued at the end of the three-day conference.

The government team is led by chief negotiator Silvestre Afable and the MILF delegation by Mohagher Iqbal, a member of the central committee.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar has said he believes that the time is ripe for the MILF to silence its guns and sign a peace treaty with Manila.

He noted a “serious desire” from both parties to maintain peace in Mindanao island.

Homeland Demand Remains

The aspration for an Islamic homeland in Mindanao remains and the MILF is prepared for extended negotiations to meet that end.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) will not sign any peace deal that falls short of the group’s aspiration for a “Moro homeland” in Mindanao, rebel chief Murad Ebrahim has said.

As head of the 12,000-strong MILF which has waged a 27-year separatist rebellion on the island of Mindanao, Ebrahim, 54, says he has a duty to the country’s marginalized Muslims who have been neglected by the government.

“We will talk for however long it takes. But we will not sign anything that does not meet the aspirations of the Bangsamoro people,” Ebrahim said in a rare interview in his camp in the southern Philippines late last year.

Ebrahim’s mother died when he was an infant, and he was raised by his Islamic preacher father who believed the best education was only available in the Catholic-run Notre Dame University in Cotabato city.

He studied diligently, acquiring a good command of the English language that would serve him well in his future career as a rebel strategist and in meetings with diplomats from the Organization of Islamic Conference.

But he stuck to his Islamic roots and was among the group of young Muslim student leaders, along with Nur Misuari, Salamat Hashim and Ghazali Jaafar, who in the 1970s formed an organization that would later become the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).

Ebrahim at 22 dropped out of his civil engineering course, and in the next 30 years he led a difficult life in the jungles.

The MNLF first took up arms to protect Muslims in Mindanao being targeted by Christian paramilitary groups controlled by deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

The group grew by the tens of thousands as the movement caught fire in Mindanao, the Philippines’ mineral-rich southern island that the Muslims claim as their ancestral land. Hashim in 1978 broke off from the MNLF and the splinter group Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) was born.

The MILF became the country’s largest Muslim separatist group when the MNLF dropped its armed struggle and settled for limited autonomy in 1996, an agreement that has failed to alleviate the plight of Muslims in Mindanao.