SULU, Philippines, 23 April 2008 — The Philippines largest Muslim rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, urged Manila yesterday to resume the stalled peace talks as Malaysia threatened anew to pull out all its cease-fire observers deployed in Mindanao if there is no progress in the seven-year old negotiations.
Kuala Lumpur is brokering the peace talks in an effort to bring an end to the more than three decades of bloody insurgency in the war-torn, but mineral-rich region in the southern Philippines.
Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak said Kuala Lumpur wanted progress in the peace process.
Malaysia’s Foreign Minister Rais Yatim on Monday said Kuala Lumpur will not be sending any more truce observers to Mindanao after the mandate of its current team ends in September.
“The thing is, we have to get cooperation from both sides,” the official Bernama news agency quoted him as saying. “But if one party is not making the effort, we will have to end the mission.”
That comment appeared to be directed at Manila, which has been accused of dragging its feet on reaching a peace deal with the rebels.
Members of the Malaysian Defense Forces had been in Mindanao since 2004 as part of the International Monitoring Team (IMT).
The monitoring team is composed of 41 officers from the Malaysian Defense Forces, the Royal Malaysia Police, and the Prime Minister’s Department and is also supported by 10 military officers from Brunei Darussalam and 5 from Libya. Canada and Japan have also members on the team.
The MILF fears that the pull out of international truce observers would have an effect on the peace process in Mindanao.
“There is apprehension of course and with the impending pull out of the IMT, we don’t know what will happen. We really cannot predict the future of the peace talks, but we have been so many times urging the government to resume the stalled peace talks and nothing has come up,” Eid Kabalu, a rebel spokesman, said yesterday.
The MILF previously appealed to rebels and supporters for patience as the talks stalled over demands for a separate Muslim homeland.
In Manila, the government’s chief negotiator expressed the same apprehension, saying that the government fears the rise of more radical elements within the country’s largest Muslim rebel group after Malaysia pulls out peace monitors later this year.
Rodolfo Garcia, a retired general, said there could also be a breakdown in the nearly five-year-old cease-fire as the withdrawal of peace monitors would affect negotiations.
While he conceded progress in the talks was slow, Garcia defended the government’s cautious efforts in ensuring a peace deal that could be implemented smoothly.
“I think it is the government’s duty to conduct due diligence on what the two sides would eventually agree because there are so many legal and constitutional issues involved,” he said, adding the government had not turned its back on the peace process.
“It remains as one of the government’s priorities and we’re hoping to wrap it up before August this year.”
Last month, US Ambassador Kristie Kenney met with the secluded MILF chieftain Murad Ebrahim and discussed the peace process in Mindanao.
The US had in the past offered as much as $30 million to fund development projects in Muslim areas in the southern region should the MILF signed a peace deal with Manila.
MILF chief peace negotiator Mohagher Iqbal said the Filipino peace panel last year agreed on the scope of the Muslim ancestral domain, but later reneged on the accord that will constitute a separate homeland for over 4 million Muslims and indigenous tribes in Mindanao.
“This ugly turn of events is taxing the patience of the Bangsamoro people who may be compelled to resort to other means of resolving the conflict as the state of the peace process has become hopeless,” Iqbal said.
