MANILA: The Philippines said yesterday it would review a peace deal with the country’s biggest Muslim group after fighting broke out this week, softening an earlier stance that the agreement would be canceled.
But a senior leader of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rejected calls for renegotiating the deal, throwing efforts to end the decades-long conflict in the mineral and resource-rich Mindanao region into further disarray.
“The present situation... in Mindanao leaves us no choice but to review and revisit the provisions contained in the memorandum of agreement,” Lorelei Fajardo, a spokeswoman for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, said in a statement.
An earlier statement had said the agreement would be scrapped.
“She (Arroyo) will seek peace within the boundaries of law set within the constitution,” Fajardo said.
The deal, which envisaged the enlargement of a Muslim autonomous area in the Mindanao region as a step toward resuming full-fledged peace negotiations, has been halted by the Supreme Court pending hearing an appeal by Christian groups that it was unconstitutional.
“Negotiations, honest negotiations, can only happen and become effective only in an atmosphere of peace and tranquillity,” Arroyo’s political adviser Gabriel Claudio told reporters.
The MILF also rejected demands by the Philippine government for the surrender of two renegade commanders blamed for attacks that killed dozens of people, setting the stage for a possible escalation in fighting.
Government Press Secretary Jesus Dureza said the front should hand over Abdullah Macapaar, also known as Bravo, and Ameril Umbra Kato. Bravo allegedly led a raid Monday on five towns that left 37 people shot or hacked to death. Kato led the occupation of predominantly Christian villages in the south last week.
In a radio interview, Dureza said the government cannot sign a peace agreement with “an organization that doesn’t have control over its commanders” and called for the surrender of front Chairman Murad Ebrahim.
“We should expect him to surrender and bring to government the two commanders who are clearly responsible for these acts,” Dureza told DZMM radio. “Nothing short of that is acceptable to government.”
But Mohagher Iqbal, the rebels’ chief peace negotiator, refused. “We are a revolutionary organization. We will never turn over our men to them. We have our own internal justice (system),” he told reporters by telephone.
