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Manila proposes to review peace deal
The Philippines said yesterday it would review a peace deal with the country's biggest Muslim rebel group after fighting broke out earlier this week, softening an earlier stance that the agreement would be cancelled.
- Reuters
- Published: 23:42 August 21, 2008
- Alvin Cuntu, foreground, leader of a band of 31 Moro rebels who laid down their arms, leads his men as they pledge support to the government at a military camp in Iligan City in southern Philippines. .
- Image Credit: AP
Manila: The Philippines on Thursday said it would review a peace deal with the country's biggest Muslim rebel group after fighting broke out earlier this week, softening an earlier stance that the agreement would be cancelled.
But a senior leader of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rejected calls for renegotiating the deal, throwing efforts to end the decades-long conflict in the mineral and resource-rich Mindanao region into further disarray.
"The present situation in Mindanao leaves us no choice but to review and revisit the provisions contained in the memorandum of agreement," Lorelei Fajardo, a spokeswoman for President Gloria Arroyo, said in a statement.
An earlier statement had said the agreement would be scrapped.
"She (Arroyo) will seek peace within the boundaries of law set within the constitution," Fajardo said.
Appeal hearing pending
The deal, which envisaged the enlargement of a Muslim autonomous area in the Mindanao region as a step towards resuming full-fledged peace negotiations, has been halted by the Supreme Court pending a hearing on an appeal by Christian groups that it was unconstitutional.
"Negotiations, honest negotiations, can only happen and become effective only in an atmosphere of peace and tranquility," Arroyo's political adviser Gabriel Claudio told reporters.
"We cannot allow a situation where we talk peace, we undertake a peace process, and the parties concerned are taking up arms."
Earlier this week, about 40 people were killed when MILF renegades, angered at the stalling of the agreement, attacked two towns in the volatile south of the country.
The government has reinforced troops in the region and ordered a hunt for the attackers. The military said five people were wounded in fighting on Wednesday. It is the worst violence for years in the Mindanao region, where the rebellion has prevented any significant development of some of the richest mineral and hydrocarbon resources in Southeast Asia.
The MILF meanwhile rejected any possibility of renegotiating the deal.
"We will not renegotiate, it's already finished," Mohaqher Iqbal, the group's chief negotiator, said while addressing reporters.
"It's been three years and eight months. They studied it and scheduled the signing and then they cancel everything. What is that?"
Manila and the 11,000-member MILF have been in on-off talks for more than a decade on how to give Muslims greater autonomy in the south.
At least 120,000 people have been killed in 40 years of conflict on Mindanao.
Legal experts expect the Supreme Court will rule that the agreement, which gives a future government of an expanded Muslim homeland wide political and economic powers, is unconstitutional.
A further bout of violence is expected following such a decision but an all-out war is not considered likely as neither side has the resources to deliver a knockout blow.
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