MANILA/ZAMBOANGA CITY, 9 July 2003 — The United States is offering to underwrite a proposed political settlement to the decades-long Muslim separatist rebellion in the Philippines as part of its global effort to fight terrorism, US officials said yesterday.
Wendy Chamberlin, assistant administrator for the US Agency for International Development (USAID), said Washington “will be pleased to provide assistance” to “help the parties in this conflict to consolidate their peace process and chart a new future for the children of Mindanao.”
The visiting official said she plans to tour the southern island, the hotbed of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) insurgency, to discuss possible aid to the region in the context of the ongoing peace process.
President Gloria Arroyo’s government is trying to overcome the remaining hurdles to the start of formal peace talks with the 12,500-member guerrilla force. Neighboring Malaysia has offered to host the negotiations.
“We hope to begin to look at what we can do together in education, good governance, and economic” spheres, Chamberlin told a news conference after calling on Arroyo here. “Through all of these programs, and in a much broader sense, we’re working together to combat terrorism.
“Aid, as it might be available as a result of these discussions, will only be available if there is peace, if there is an end to violence in these areas.”
She said the assistance would probably be “similar to what we have provided to former MNLF combatants,” referring to livelihood projects for former guerrillas of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), a second Muslim armed faction that signed a peace treaty with Manila in 1996.
Washington is providing $70 million in the current US fiscal year to the Philippines, Chamberlin said. More than half of it dedicated to Mindanao.
“The US role (in the MILF peace talks), as we see it, is in two areas. Number one is underwriting the peace,” US Ambassador to Manila Francis Ricciardone said.
President Arroyo yesterday said that her government would agree to lift arrest warrants against MILF leaders to jump-start the stalled peace talks.
Arroyo said her government was working to “build confidence MILF.
“We are open to the suspension of warrants by the court if this is necessary (to) move the peace talks forward,” the president said.
Malaysia, which has hosted preliminary peace talks, has said it would be difficult to go ahead with formal negotiations with the arrest warrants still in effect. Under the Philippines legal system only the courts can lift the warrants.
MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu welcomed Arroyo’s statement and said rebel negotiators were now prepared to resume talks in Malaysia.
“That’s a positive development. We welcome that development,” Kabalu said, stressing that both sides were now “on the stage of compliance for resumption of peace talks.”
“If this will continue I think we will have a good start for the resumption of the talks,” he said.
The MILF had earlier warned that the rebels would not return to the negotiating table unless the arrest warrants again
An MILF leader, Gordon Saifullah, was quoted by the group’s website Luwaran.com as saying fighting could erupt again if both sides failed to resume peace talks.
“War can resume anytime if the peace talks between the MILF and GRP will not resume soon,” the senior rebel leader said.
The warrants against MILF chairman Salamat Hashim and other senior leaders were in connection with deadly bombings in Mindanao this year. “The MILF must not tarry on the procedural issues involved, especially so that it has several lawyers and legal advisers among its ranks,” Arroyo said. “We must avoid being bogged down by these matters.”
Salamat’s group was linked to the spate of bombings in the southern Philippines that left nearly 100 people dead since early this year.
