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By Al Jacinto, Reporter
ZAMBOANGA CITY: The largest Muslim separatist
rebel group, Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), warned that
fighting may erupt in Mindanao if peace talks with the Arroyo
government fail.
The MILF accused President Gloria Arroyo of
reneging on an earlier commitment that would grant a separate
homeland for about four million Muslims in the country’s second
largest island which is home to more than 17 million Christians and
indigenous tribes.
Talks had been stalled since last year after
Manila rejected MILF demands for territories in the strife-torn, but
mineral-rich region in Mindanao.
MILF leader Muhammad Ameen said Arroyo will have
blood on her hands if hostilities break out in the south.
“President Arroyo is reversing her policy from an all-out peace
policy to an all-out war,” he said.
Arroyo opened up peace talks with the MILF, an
army of about 12,000 mujahideen, and signed a cease-fire deal in
2001. But the slow progress of the negotiations is threatening the
volatile peace and security in the region. Many rebel commanders are
getting more restless and want to abandon the peace talks.
“This is a tragic decision. She has done
irreversible damage to the pacific ways of resolving conflicts,
which the two parties, the Malaysian government, Libya, Brunei, and
Japan, and other members of the international community, have
nurtured for years.”
“She will be hounded by her conscience, if she
has one, until she dies for abandoning the peace talks in favor of a
bloodbath in Mindanao,” Ameen said.
Malaysia, which is brokering the seven-year old
peace talks, has already recalled about two dozen cease-fire
observers deployed in Mindanao over the weekend because of the
stalled negotiations. Kuala Lumpur said it wanted progress in the
peace talks and blamed Manila for the delay in the negotiations.
The MILF said government troops are beefing up
firepower in Mindanao and is causing tension in the region
considered as a hotbed of insurgency and terrorism. And the extreme
poverty situation, especially in Muslim areas, is further aggravated
by the lack of basic government services.
Ameen said they wanted peace to reign, but his
group is also prepared to defend their freedom. “We do not like
war, war is a menace to everyone, but those who want peace to
prevail must prepare for war,” he said. “Readiness and
preparedness are normal tasks in a revolutionary struggle such as
the MILF.”
The MILF, a breakaway faction of the larger Moro
National Liberation Front (MNLF), has been fighting more than three
decades for the establishment of a Muslim state in the southern
Philippines.
The MNLF, under Nur Misuari, signed a peace deal
with Manila in September 1996 ending decades of bloody war. After
the peace agreement was signed, Misuari became the governor of the
Muslim autonomous region. But despite the peace accord, there was
widespread disillusionment with the weak autonomy they were granted.
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