COTABATO CITY, 18 June 2003 — The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) yesterday threatened to fight back as it complained of the successive raids on houses of its leaders and of sustained attacks on its members.
“We cannot just take these attacks sitting down,” said MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu.
“We have no other recourse, since the government seems not to respond to our call for a cease-fire,” he added.
While the MILF remained passive, Kabalu said, government troops had been conducting raids since Sunday on suspected safe houses of rebel leaders in Maguindanao province.
Ghazali Jaafar and Ebrahim Murad, MILF vice chairmen for political and military affairs, were the targets of police-military raids in Crossing Simuay town in Sultan Kudarat province, and in the village of Rosary Heights 5 here on Monday.
Jaafar and Ebrahim carry a five-million-peso bounty each, dead or alive.
Chief inspector Roberto Badian of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, who led the raids, admitted the operations were unproductive.
MILF information chief Mohager Iqbal has warned of resumed fighting next week.
In Manila, President Gloria Arroyo urged the separatists to stop dillydallying about peace talks, or “slide into irrelevance.”
In a statement, the president said the MILF risked being “left behind by the inexorable march of peace” because of its “temporizing gestures.”
“There is a mounting clamor of the people and the world Islamic community for peace,” she said. “The use of force to gain political ends is already passe.”
The rebel MILF reiterated in a statement issued also yesterday that unless its conditions were met, its leader Salamat Hashim would not sit as chief negotiator, as demanded by Arroyo, in the proposed resumption of talks.
The talks are being brokered by neighboring Malaysia, which has put pressure on the 12,500-member MILF to seek a negotiated settlement.
The MILF stayed out of a 1996 peace treaty signed by the government and a rival separatist faction, the Moro National Liberation Front, which settled for limited self-rule in a number of southern provinces.
At least on paper, the MILF has stuck to its original objective of setting up an Islamic state in Mindanao.
Malaysia, Indonesia and other southern neighbors are wary of Muslim separatism in the Philippines in the face of a violent campaign waged by Jemaah Islamiah, a militant Islamic movement, to set up a Southeast Asian caliphate that would include Mindanao.
The MILF statement quoted political officer Ghazali Jaafar as saying its Central Committee would decide who should be chief peace negotiator for the group.
Jaafar noted that the current authorized negotiators were led by the movement’s second in command and overall guerrilla commander, Murad Ebrahim.
The MILF statement said Salamat would be “prepared to sit down in the peace negotiations as protocol warrants, especially during the conclusion of final peace agreement, if there will be any.”
