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By Jefferson Antiporda, Reporter
The Malaysian government will continue with its
role as mediator in ongoing peace talks between the Philippine
government and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
Tan Sri Abdul Aziz Bin Hj Zainal, visiting
Malaysian Armed Forces chief, on Thursday said his government is not
abandoning the peace process despite its impending pullout from a
group overseeing a ceasefire between Manila and the MILF. Kuala
Lumpur, he added, may return and even come up with a different
format to speed up the negotiations.
Malaysia leads the International Monitoring Team
(IMT) checking on the truce between the Philippine government and
MILF rebels in the southern Mindanao region.
The insurgents, said to number 12,000, have
fought for an independent Islamic state in the region since 1978.
They continue to fight the Philippine government
for autonomy and control over predominantly Muslim areas, covering
the southern portion of Mindanao, the Sulu Archipelago, Palawan,
Basilan, and neighboring islands. There are about 4.5 million
Muslims in the Philippines, majority of whom live within the areas
mentioned.
“The peace process will continue. As far as
Malaysia is concerned, we are not abandoning the peace process in
the South,” Aziz told reporters in Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City
after meeting with Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr., Philippine Armed
Forces chief, and Rodolfo Garcia, the government’s head
negotiator.
The Malaysian visitor said the pullout of
Malaysian peacekeepers from the International Monitoring Team is
expected, since the team’s one-year contract will expire on August
31 this year.
“It doesn’t mean that we are abandoning the
peace process, because the peace process is divided into teams, one
with the IMT, the ceasefire committee, and the other one is the
peace facilitator. So Malaysia will continue to take on [its]
commitment [as facilitator],” Aziz added.
He hinted that his government could send a new
group, depending on progress in the peace negotiations. Aziz said
the new group might be in the form of a smaller force or a
combination of the monitoring team and other forms.
The Malaysian military chief added that Kuala
Lumpur has provided an alternative platform to ensure that the peace
process will continue. He said his government is looking for new
formats to introduce to hasten the peace process in southern
Philippines.
In April, Malaysia’s Foreign Minister Datuk
Seri Dr. Rais Yatim said Kuala Lumpur will not be sending any more
truce observers to Mindanao after the mandate of its current team
ends.
Since 2004, members of the Malaysian Defense
Forces have been based in Mindanao as part of the International
Monitoring Team. Forty-one officers from the Malaysian Defense
Forces, the Royal Malaysian Police, and the Prime Minister’s
Department are among the members of the team.
The monitoring team is also supported by 10
military officers from Brunei Darussalam and five from Libya. Canada
and Japan also contributed members to it.
Concerns were raised on possible eruption of
violence in Mindanao as a result of the Malaysian pullout, but
Malaysian and Philippine officials have dismissed this.
Aziz said renewed violence will not happen since
they already created a peaceful atmosphere in the South, as proved
by a decrease in the number of ceasefire violations from 2004 up to
the present.
“They [Manila and the rebels] have been
enjoying the peaceful situation in the last two years and I’m sure
they wouldn’t like to go back to the old days when they were
fighting. We’re very confident that the situation will continue to
improve,” Aziz added.
Esperon agreed, saying people in Mindanao are
satisfied with the current situation there, and would choose peace,
not violence.
He cited the decrease in the number of ceasefire
violations, from 589 in 2003 to only 15 in 2004, and claimed the
number of violent incidents continues to go down.
“Today, we have only one ceasefire violation
[in 2008], so if that’s the way of saying [the peace is] holding,
indeed it is,” Esperon said.
-- With AFP
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