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By Angelo S. Samonte Reporter
President Gloria Arroyo on
Tuesday said she plans to consult Britain and Sweden in negotiating
peace with the Muslim separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF)
in Mindanao.
The Chief Executive cited recent
attacks by supposedly rogue MILF fighters on several provinces in
Mindanao as having highlighted a need to further consult various
sectors, including the international community, on breaking a
standoff between the government and the MILF in southern
Philippines.
President Arroyo said both Sweden
and Britain, through former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, have
experience in negotiations with rebel groups.
”Actually, Tony Blair is
willing to come to help us because he played a very strong part in
the negotiations with Northern Ireland. Besides, also Sweden is
helping us in the DDR [disarmament, demobilization, rehabilitation]
side,” she added.
The President said the government
would formally incorporate the DDR in dealing with the MILF in the
peace negotiations. She added that she already ordered her chief
peace adviser, Hermogenes Esperon Jr., to carry it out.
Mrs. Arroyo reiterated that her
administration would talk only to Muslim groups that do not bear
arms.
While the government starts to
convene a meeting of the expanded Legislative-Executive Development
Advisory Council to reassess the government’s peace policy, she
said, her administration would conduct dialogues directly with
Muslim communities as part of a shift in peace strategy.
Misuari offers to help
What Sweden and Britain could do
to help peace reign in Mindanao, a Muslim rebel leader said he
could, too.
Chairman Nur Misuari of the Moro
National Liberation Front (MNLF) also on Tuesday expressed his
willingness to help achieve peace in the South if the government
will ask him.
Misuari, during an interview with
the media after meeting with the deputy chief of the military,
Rodrigo Maclang, said he had made the rounds of Mindanao in the past
two months promoting peace.
“I even went to the most
forbidden areas in Mindanao just to promote peace, I don’t like
any further bloodshed,” he added.
Misuari called on the people of
Mindanao not to “add fuel” to the conflict by contributing
toward peace and ending the fighting in the South so that displaced
residents could go back to their lives.
He met with Maclang at Camp
Aguinaldo, the military’s general headquarters in Quezon City, to
discuss the welfare of MNLF members integrated into the Armed
Forces.
Update on clashes
In the latest clashes between
government troops and the MILF, five were killed, officials said
also on Tuesday.
Fighting entered its second week
in the troubled region after troops drove away hundreds of the
insurgents under Ameril Kato and Abdurahman Macapaar, both of whom
had led attacks in Mindanao.
Lt. Gen. Nelson Allaga, commander
of the military’s Western Mindanao Command, said government planes
bombed MILF targets in Lanao del Norte province where the two rogue
leaders were believed to be hiding.
He added that five rebels were
killed and 10 more wounded, but there have been no reports whether
Kato or Macapaar was among the dead or injured.
Allaga said five soldiers were
also wounded in the fighting in the village of Lunsod in Poona
Piagapo, Lanao del Norte, scene of fierce clashes that killed 16
rebels and two infantrymen last week.
He added that troops already
seized several small bases of Macapaar in Poona Piagapo and
Matunggao towns.
Allaga said intelligence reports
suggested that Macapaar, or Commander Bravo, was wounded in the
government offensive, but the military in the past issued similar
statements only to recant them later.
It previously reported that Kato
was also injured in an ambush staged by the military, but this also
turned out to be false.
Military forces also have killed
more than 100 rebels since last week in fierce fighting in
Maguindanao and Sarangani provinces.
The fighting continued despite
peace talks between Manila and the MILF.
The hostilities were also
threatening the seven-year-old peace negotiations and there is no
sign the fighting would stop.
The MILF refused to surrender
Kato and Bravo despite Manila’s repeated demands.
The President, who has put up a
P5-million bounty each for Kato and Bravo, ordered police and
military forces to capture the two rebels, who are among a small
circle of MILF hardliners linked to the Indonesian terror group
Jemaah Islamiah.
Allaga has urged civilians to
help in capturing Kato and Macapaar and provide intelligence to
authorities about the two commanders’ groups.
The rebels launched the attacks
after the aborted signing of an ancestral-domain deal between the
MILF and Manila.
The accord would have granted
Muslims their own homeland in more than 700 villages across
Mindanao, but the deal also sparked a series of protests from
politicians and residents opposed to the inclusion of their areas in
the agreement that will make up the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity.
The Supreme Court stopped the
signing of the land deal after some lawmakers and politicians filed
separate petitions asking the government to bare the rest of the
agreement with the MILF.
--With Al Jacinto
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