US expert on MILF arriving in Manila

As new clashes between Muslim rebels and government forces erupt in Mindanao, the US foreign affairs official in charge of East Asia and the Pacific is set to arrive in Manila on Wednesday.

Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell will arrive after a visit to Jakarta, the US Department of State said in a statement. He will meet “with senior government officials to discuss bilateral and regional issues,” it said.

Specific issues were not revealed, however.

According to Wikileaks, Campbell wrote Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) chairman Ebrahim Murad in November 2009 to express the US government’s  willingness to provide “political and financial” support for the peace process between Manila and the Moro rebels.

The US official also expressed disquiet that, at that time, the MILF “has not completely severed its links with international terrorist organizations.”

Campbell had said the US government was asking the MILF to “dissolve those links immediately.”

The militant Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan) urged government officials to discuss with Campbell the status of the Philippine-US Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and the status of American troops in the country.

In a statement, Bayan secretary general Renato M. Reyes Jr. noted that “the unilateral US troop deployment in the Philippines, unlike in Iraq, is open-ended and could last forever.”

“This is an anomaly arising from the lopsided Visiting Forces Agreement with the US. This is clearly an affront to our sovereignty,” Reyes said.

He said the American pullout from Iraq was also due to the failure to amend the Status of Forces Agreement between the United States and Iraq after Iraqi authorities refused to grant American troops immunity from suit.

“At the very least, the Aquino government should raise the issue of the US permanent presence in Mindanao during the visit of Campbell. Our government should start invoking national interest and stop acting like puppets and wimps in the presence of the US,” Reyes said.

“Now is a good time to talk about the VFA and the US troops in Mindanao, considering they’ve been here for close to a decade. Moreover, after more than a year in office, Aquino has still not delivered on his promise of reviewing the VFA. No results have been made public as of now,” he added.

Reyes said the US was keeping some 600 Special Forces operatives in the southern Philippines as part of a global deployment under the US Special Operations Command.

In January 2012, the US troops in Mindanao will be marking one decade of permanent presence in the region, a feat unseen since the time of the US military bases up to 1991, Reyes said. Philip C. Tubeza