ZAMBOANGA, 15 October 2004 — An international military team monitoring a cease-fire here between the Philippines and Muslim separatists has been asked by local officials to establish their headquarters elsewhere.
The government of this port city said yesterday the city council feared the presence of the monitors, who started arriving last weekend, would bring Muslim rebels into the city of more than 600,000 people.
Zamboanga Mayor Celso Lobregat also warned that authorities would arrest Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) guerrilla members who entered the city with arms.
President Gloria Arroyo asked neighboring Malaysia and other Asian members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference to provide troops to serve as international monitors to a cease-fire with the rebels as part of confidence-building measures ahead of planned peace talks.
More than 50 Malaysian security officials deployed in the Mindanao region last weekend, with more foreign monitors expected.
Lobregat said he told the Malaysians he objected to their establishing a base in Zamboanga City because it was not a site of conflict between the government and the rebels. He also said the presence of the monitoring team would hurt the city’s image as a peaceful place.
Lobregat also cited a provision in the monitoring accord that the rebels should provide armed security along with the military, to the Malaysian monitors. This would violate a city policy allowing only police and soldiers to carry firearms.
“We are going to arrest the MILF. We have been implementing here the gun ban and the law does not excuse and exempt anybody,” Lobregat told reporters in this city which is about 70 percent Christian and 30 percent Muslim.
Lobregat said he asked the monitoring team to establish their offices in the areas affected by fighting.
US Officials Inspect Projects in Basilan
Top US officials inspected yesterday an infrastructure project funded by Washington on a remote coastal town in the southern island of Basilan.
US Ambassador to the Philippines Francis Ricciardone and Andrew Natsios, administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), arrived in Maluso town onboard military speedboats from Zamboanga City where they inspected an ongoing port reconstruction.
Students, carrying small American flags, lined up a dirt road where the US officials passed. They chanted the names of Ricciardone, some were saying “Long Live America.”
“We are here to see the projects and we hope to provide more assistance to the Filipino people. We are friends,” Ricciardone told reporters.
But for Basilan Gov. Wahab Akbar, a former Muslim rebel leader-turned-politician, it is better off for the island’s 350,000 population to be under US rule.
“If I have my way, I want Basilan to be part of the United States and we will call this great land the State of Basilan, then we can have better lives,” he told Arab News.
