Manila: Negotiators from the Philippines government and a rebel group have admitted the difficulty of realising an ambitious plan to decommission the firearms of the military and other armed groups in the country’s restive south.

The government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebel group began peace talks in Malaysia on Wednesday.

In addition to the army, pro-government militia, several rebel militant groups, private armed groups backed by politicians, Al Qaida-linked terrorists and kidnap-for-ransom bandits operate in the southern Philippines, known as a wilderness of loose firearms and hotheads.

“We need to be realistic enough to know we will also make mistakes, that we will not be able to bring everybody on board, that we will suffer delays, that there will be naysayers, recalcitrants and breakaways, as well as corrupt and abusive members of our respective organisations,” said Philippine government negotiator Miriam Coronel-Ferrer at the start of negotiations with the MILF in Kuala Lumpur.

“We in the MILF and government continue to strive to overcome all that stands in our way leading to the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement,” Mohagher Iqbal, the chief MILF negotiator, said at the opening of the talks that were scheduled to end on January 26.

The government and the MILF have already agreed in principle to “decommission” the arms of the MILF fighters; but the firearms will not be destroyed, said a source who requested for anonymity. They have yet to finalise details of an agreement on how to secure the firearms and which third international party will make initial and continuous inventory of the rebels’ firearms, the source added.

The government has yet to respond to the MILF’s proposal that MILF fighters must be allowed a minimum number of firearms based on the country’s gun law, said the source, adding that both parties will agree on the stages of the decommissioning of arms of the MILF and the government forces.

Iqbal said both parties had already agreed in principle that the military and pro-government militia must also gradually decommission arms, adding that the Philippine government and the MILF have yet to discuss the stages of the redeployment of government soldiers from or within the autonomous region of Filipino-Muslims.

As this happens, the military, police, and the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF), the armed wing of the MILF, “will join each other in keeping peace in the south,” explained Coronel-Ferrer.

The MILF has also proposed that the government must be responsible for preventing the proliferation of firearms among private armed groups in the south.

The idea is to make the southern Philippines gun-free, said Coronel-Ferrer, adding that this plan will involve other southern parts such as Zamboanga City, Zamboanga Peninsula, North Cotabato and Lanao del Norte.

These areas are outside the five provinces and city that currently comprise the existing Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), which the Philippine government and the MILF hope to expand with eight more municipalities and 800 Muslim-dominated villages.

The socially volatile south is also the base of the Abu Sayyaf militant group and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighter (BIFF), the armed wing of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement (BIFM) led by former MILF commander Umbra Ameril Kato.

It is also the home of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) whose faction led by MNLF founder Nur Misuari renewed a second armed struggle by taking over several villages in Zamboanga City in September 2013.

Misuari had forged two pro-autonomy peace settlements with the Philippine government in 1986 and 1997.

Despite the problems these groups might create, 90 per cent of the details of the normalisation annex have been agreed upon by the Philippine government and the MILF, said Iqbal.

Normalisation is the fourth annex to be finalised by the two parties before their signing of a comprehensive peace settlement.

President Benigno Aquino said the expansion of the ARMM and the establishment of a new Bangsamoro political entity in the south, for all Filipino-Muslims, should be done before the end of his term in 2016.