COTABATO CITY, Philippines, 17 March 2003 — Christian and Muslim religious leaders are being asked to take an active role in bringing the government and Moro separatists back to the peace table amid fears of a conflagration in the southern Philippines.

Vice President Teofisto Guingona said the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) and the Ulema could help bring back peace by becoming peace monitors.

Guingona, a critic of the President Gloria Arroyo’s Mindanao policy, also called on the government to return to the negotiating table.

He said government forces may have captured MILF camps but that is no guaranty that peace would reign.

“The government can’t wipe out these rebels especially since they are guerrillas. If you eliminate the leaders, they will only come up with new leaders,” he said in a news briefing where he proposed the resumption of peace talks.

On Saturday and yesterday, clashes between government troops and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) erupted in Basilan in the southwest and as far as Sarangani in southeastern Mindanao. Both sides said there was no backing down.

The military said the clash on Basilan Island erupted when dozens of rocket-firing Abu Sayyaf guerrillas attacked an army outpost in the village of Colonia in Lamitan town, 900 kilometers south of Manila, before dawn.

At least two of the attackers were killed and two government soldiers were injured, said Col. Bonifacio Ramos, the army commander in Basilan.

MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said, however, that the rebels involved in the Basilan clash were their fighters. He said they were only defending their territory from encroaching army soldiers.

“Our forces will continue to exercise their rights to defend themselves and their homeland from the continuing aggression by the AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines,” Kabalu said in a press statement.

Kabalu said MILF fighters also attacked an army post at Barangay Buries in Glan, Sarangani, killing a sergeant and injuring three others. One MILF fighter suffered minor injuries, he said.

At the MILF’s former main base of Camp Abubakar in Matanog, Maguindanao, at least seven army command posts came under attack simultaneously on Saturday night, according to an MILF statement. It claimed that 13 soldiers were killed and 21 injured, while only two of the attackers sustained injuries.

In its own report, the military said the MILF attacks started at around 1 a.m. on Saturday with the destruction of an electric post in Pikit town, North Cotabato province.

In Sarangani, it said, one soldier was killed.

The report said suspected MILF guerrillas also burned 12 nipa huts in Sulok of barangay Dunguan in Aleosan town, North Cotabato.

‘Many Want War'

Several sectors over the weekend urged the two sides to resume the peace talks, but in a TV interview on Saturday night, President Arroyo doused cold water on such talk.

She said a Malacañang in-house survey found that a majority of the people in Mindanao want the government to wage war on the MILF.

The president did not provide details of the survey during her interview over Sen. Noli de Castro’s Magandang Gabi, Bayan primetime talk show.

“Sa Mindanao, ‘sad to say,’ nakakarami gusto nila giyerahin nating ‘yung kalaban (In Mindanao, sad to say, the majority want us to wage war against the enemy),” the president said.

The tough talk and the attacks came even after Libya and Malaysia had started to work on a mechanism that could bring the government and the MILF back to the negotiating table.

Libyan Ambassador Salem Adam even said the warrants of arrest issued against MILF chair Salamat Hashim and his key lieutenants for the bombing outside the Davao International Airport would not hinder efforts to proceed with the peace talks.

“It will not affect the efforts. We are optimistic,” Adam said. “We are soon to start talks between the GRP (Government of the Republic of the Philippines) and the MILF. The warrant of arrest is not going to be a problem.”

Adam added that the initiative had the backing of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

Adam said one of the peace mechanisms being worked out was the formation of a monitoring team, which “will ensure that the cease-fire will be strictly enforced and followed.”

“The MILF is afraid to go back to negotiation ... What will be the guarantee for them? ... The guarantee now is the monitoring team. There would be three parts: the GRP, the OIC and the MILF. New materials will be put into work,” Adam said.

Taking the First Step

Catholic bishops also appealed to the Arroyo administration to take the first step to peace.

“Our government must hold the high moral ground in humility and be the first to invite contesting forces to the peace table,” CBCP president Orlando Quevedo, archbishop of Cotabato, said in a statement.

Quevedo said the government should “persevere with all sincerity” to establish peace by halting the military operations in various parts of Mindanao. He said the government should agree to the cessation of fighting “as quickly as possible” despite claims and counterclaims of cease-fire violations.

In her TV interview, President Arroyo said she commissioned surveys regularly because “sometimes I have to do what is popular.”

She noted that such surveys often covered Metro Manila and at times were conducted nationwide.

Responding to on-air questions from Mindanao residents about whether the government intended to stop military offensives which were displacing communities, she said her policy was anchored on the principle that “peace and development go together.”

“That’s why I want peace,” the president said. She also stressed that her military policy for Mindanao was not all-out war but “active defense.”

Military officials have previously explained that active defense involves patrols and hot pursuit operations.

Al-Haj Murad, the MILF military chief, said the solution to the decades-old Mindanao conflict could be to conduct a referendum, in which the Bangsamoro (Philippine Muslims) people would be asked about their sentiments and what they want for themselves. “Even the United Nations and other international organizations recognize a referendum as one of the means in solving political problems,” Murad said.

The CBCP asked the MILF to respond to government efforts to resume negotiations by agreeing to a stop to hostilities and renewing peace initiatives.

Quevedo said that while the CBCP understood the Bangsamoro people’s quest for independence, its fight with the government had already hurt many innocent civilians and displaced thousands of families.