Peace talks between Philippine gov’t, MILF resumes Monday

OZAMIZ City, Philippines—After a three-month hiatus, peace negotiations between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) will resume on December 5, a rebel official said.

The peace panels of both parties have been scheduled to meet in Kuala Lumpur December 5-7, said the ranking MILF official, who asked to not be named as he has not been authorized by the group to speak on the matter.

“This will be a full-panel meeting,” the rebel official added.

During the upcoming meeting, the MILF would field a woman as part of its delegation, said Jun Mantawil, head of the rebel group’s peace panel secretariat.

At present, only two women are officially involved in the MILF peace panel, both members of its board of advisers—lawyer Raissa Jajurie and academic Bai Cabaybay Abubakar.

The upcoming talks will be the fourth full-panel meeting under the administration of President Aquino whose government has expressed confidence a political settlement with Moro rebels can be hammered out by 2013.

The panels have been meeting every two months since February this year. They were not able to hold full-panel talks June and October. Instead, there were informal executive sessions.

By practice, substantive issues of the peace negotiations are tackled during full-panel meetings. The last one was in August, during which government bared its proposal for a political settlement with the MILF.

Talks have since bogged down after the MILF rejected government’s formula of enhanced autonomy through a reformed Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

The rebel group has been demanding the creation of a Moro substate, which it envisions as a special region with far greater political powers than the present ARMM.

As the parties resume negotiations, discussions will revolve around the basic idea of “coming up with a political solution to the Moro question,” the MILF source said.

“It is best to approach the (resumption of) talks that way rather than open with the proposed formula already laid on the table. Hopefully it can develop a workable framework for reconciling the proposals of the respective parties,” the MILF source added.

“But this does not mean the MILF is already abandoning its draft peace pact,” the rebel official stressed.

The MILF, which has a 12,000-strong army, has been engaged in peace negotiations with government since 1997.