Don’t Abandon Arafat&#39s Quest for Peace, Philippine Separatist Group Urges Palestinians

ZAMBOANGA CITY, 12 November 2004 — Government and Philippine Muslim separatist leaders yesterday mourned the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat as a “great loss” and expressed hope that his people would soon find peace.

“The Palestinians have lost a great, beloved leader,” President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said in a press statement in Manila, praising Arafat for “working for peace for his people.”

“We share the hope that his successor will continue this quest,” she added.

Arafat died yesterday at 02.30 GMT at the age of 75 at the Percy Military Training Hospital in France.

In the southern Philippines, the largest separatist rebel group Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) urged the Palestinian people to continue with their struggle for self-determination “but for a peaceful coexistence.”

It also called on Israel “to reconsider its violent actions” against the Palestinians and “settle all problems peacefully.”

Israeli and Palestinian forces have been engaged in tit-for-tat attacks over the past years since talks for the creation of a Palestinian state in Israeli-occupied territory have collapsed.

“Nothing is more peaceful than talking on the negotiating table,” MILF spokesman Kabalu told Arab News by phone from his base in Central Mindanao.

Kabalu described Arafat as the guiding force behind the Palestinian struggle for self-determination.

He also likened the MILF’s struggle for Muslim self-rule in the southern Philippines to that of the Palestinians.

Kabalu said the MILF is not abandoning its fight for self-determination but it is commited to achieving this through a peaceful political settlement.

The MILF is currently negotiating with the Philippine government in an effort to end more than three decades of fighting in the southern Philippines, which has claimed an estimated 150,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of people from their communities.