MANILA: The Philippines is open to amending a law creating a Muslim autonomous region in the country’s south, officials said yesterday, after two days of talks with a group of former separatist leaders.
Manila also won pledges from members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to pour more development assistance into areas affected by 40 years of conflict that has killed 120,000 people, said Nabil Tan, the government’s deputy peace adviser.
Tan said the government and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) would work together to draft a new law. “We agreed to create a legal panel to harmonize proposals on how to improve the implementation of a peace pact that created the autonomous region in Muslim Mindanao,” he said.
In 1996, the Philippine government and the MNLF signed a peace deal, brokered by the OIC and Indonesia, to end an insurgency that has displaced two million in the south. The larger Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), however, did not accept the agreement and continued the struggle for an independent Muslim homeland in the southern Philippines.
In 1978, a group of staunch rebels split from the more secular MNLF. They did not agree with the autonomy deal between Manila and the MNLF, brokered by Libya.
Six years later, the MILF drew more support from Muslims not happy with the MNLF’s political deal with the government. Last year, the government agreed to expand the ancestral homeland for Muslims in the south after talks with the MILF, but negotiations were suspended when violence escalated in six southern provinces.
Tan said the joint legal panel with the MNLF will have until the end of April to propose amendments. He said the OIC was also eager to get a copy of the proposed legislation ahead of its annual ministerial meeting in Damascus late in May.
