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Muslim separatists from the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have been offered a federal state
with control of vast resources to end a decades-old rebellion in
southern Philippines, a senior aide to President Gloria Arroyo said
Thursday.
The government and the MILF reached a
breakthrough after informal talks in Malaysia on Wednesday and are
set to meet again on July 24 to discuss when to sign an agreement
reached after years of negotiations.
The core of the proposed Muslim-controlled
entity would be the four provinces in the South that make up a
self-rule area called the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM),
said Hermogenes Esperon Jr., presidential adviser on the peace talks
with the country’s Muslim and communist insurgencies.
The ARMM was created by a 1996 peace treaty
signed by Manila and another Muslim separatist group, the Moro
National Liberation Front.
Its government now controls its mineral
resources, but there has been practically no investment in the
mining or oil sectors there due to the insurgency, which has
sporadically flared up despite a 2003 ceasefire.
Esperon said the final stage of the talks would
deal with “what organizations to be put up to enable the new
Bangsamoro Juridical Entity to function efficiently.”
“This [juridical entity] likely would take [a]
form more advanced than that of an autonomous region, and this would
take the form of [a] federal state,” he said.
The government may start preparations to amend
the Constitution in mid-2009 to accommodate the creation of a
federal state in Mindanao, Esperon added.
He said if his one-year timetable for the
signing of a final peace agreement with the MILF is achieved, the
Arroyo administration can already begin pushing for constitutional
changes by around September next year.
The juridical entity would cover a considerable
area aside from the
territory covered by ARMM.
Besides amending the Constitution, the conduct
of a plebiscite in 712 villages in the provinces of Lanao del Norte,
North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Zamboanga Sibugay and Palawan, is
also needed, Esperon said.
The government was working on a roadmap for
federalism in Mindanao before the peace negotiations hit a snag last
year over disagreements on the ancestral-domain issue.
”As part of our offer, we gave them [rebels] a
timeline which I believe is acceptable to them. Six months after
signing the agreement on
ancestral domain, we will already hold plebiscites in the villages
that will be included in their Bangsamoro Juridical Entity maybe in
January or February next year even as the formal negotiations for
the last phase of the peace talks are still ongoing,” Esperon
explained.
The 712 villages up for inclusion will come from
the mineral-rich
island of Palawan in Luzon, South Cotabato, Zamboanga City, Sultan
Kudarat, North Cotabato, Lanao del Norte and Zamboanga del Sur.
-- AFP and Angelo S. Samonte
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