MANILA, 15 May 2003 — A leader of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front warned yesterday that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s threat to label them terrorists could end peace talks and drag the violent southern Philippines into an even bloodier war.

The government, faced with a spate of bombings and attacks blamed on the separatist, has given the guerrillas until June 1 to renounce terrorism and turn over rebels responsible for the attacks.

Otherwise, the government said it will regard the MILF a terrorist organization and ask the United States to include the group on its terrorist list, a step toward cutting the rebels’ foreign support. Two other Philippine rebel groups are already on the US list.

“We have nothing to clarify and we have nothing to offer,” rebel spokesman Eid Kabalu said in response to the government’s demands, describing them as part of efforts to bully the rebels into surrendering.

If the government declares the MILF a terrorist organization, Kabalu said it would mean “the government is closing its door to the peace process and (intends to) pursue a military solution.”

“Then we have to defend ourselves at all costs,” Kabalu told The Associated Press. “It will be a bloody war.”

Despite recent setbacks in peace talks, Kabalu said his group would be willing to resume negotiations if the government complies with past agreements, withdraws troops from a recently seized rebel stronghold and retracts criminal charges against MILF leaders over recent deadly bombings.

The government had been reluctant to put a terrorist tag on the MILF, which has been fighting for a separate Muslim homeland, for fear it may disrupt sporadic peace talks with the rebels.

But after a series of bombings and raids that left more than 200 dead this year, Arroyo has warned of a crackdown, unless the rebels show they want peace and distance themselves from foreign terrorists.

In the latest bombing, 10 people were killed and 40 others injured when a blast ripped through a crowded market in the southern city of Koronadal on Saturday.

On Wednesday, eight gunmen, identifying themselves as MILF rebels, burned a bus in southern Zamboanga del Sur province after robbing the passengers. The attackers threatened with more attacks unless the owner paid them “rebel taxes,” police chief Supt. Godofredo delos Santos said.

“This is not a fight against Muslims. This is a fight against terror being waged by all decent and civilized Filipinos,” Arroyo said in a statement yesterday. “We will not acknowledge false offers of peace or succumb to political pressure.”

Philippine and Singapore officials have linked the MILF to Jemaah Islamiyah, a Muslim militant group which is allegedly associated with Al-Qaida and has been blamed for last year’s Bali bombings in Indonesia that killed 202 people.

Kabalu yesterday denied his group had any ties with Jemaah Islamiyah, saying his group had been established long before Jemaah Islamiyah and has flourished without any help from other organizations.

He also said the rebels would cooperate with any government investigation of their alleged terrorist links.

“We have been threatened that we will be pulverized, bombed out of existence and now they’re using this terrorist label. We have been threatened enough and nothing can scare us anymore,” Kabalu said.

On the MILF’s alleged links with the Abu Sayyaf kidnap gang, Kabalu complained that the issue is again being “recycled” even though the Front had clarified many times in the past their relationship.

Military and police officials had revived charges of an MILF-Abu Sayyaf collusion after American missionary Gracia Burnham, a former hostage of Abu Sayyaf, wrote in a book that they were taken to an MILF camp sometime in 2001 at the height of a military campaign to rescue them.

Burnham and her husband Martin were among 22 hostages seized by Abu Sayyaf bandits at the Dos Palmas Resort in Palawan in May 2001.

Kabalu confirmed that Amir Mingkong, one of the MILF’s commanders in Basilan, gave refuge to the kidnappers and their for two weeks but that didn’t prove that the MILF is also engaged in kidnappings and killings.

He said Mingkong didn’t clear his action with MILF leaders and was reprimanded and recalled.

The captives were tired and starving and Mingkong took pity on them, Kabalu said.

He said accusations that the MILF was in collusion with the kidnap gang was rather funny since some Basilan residents and a Roman Catholic priest have alleged that military officers took bribes from the Abu Sayyaf to let the rebels escape with their hostages from a Basilan hospital two years ago.

“Look at the guns of the Abu Sayyaf and you’ll have an idea where they come from,” Kabalu said, referring to claims that military men occasionally sell weapons to the rebels.

Kabalu further said they still believe that the recent bombing in Koronadal City that killed 9 people could be a diversionary tactic of the military aimed to shelve out the issue on Abu Sayyaf — military collaboration as also alleged by Burnham in her book.