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Government negotiator Marvic Leonen during an interview at the Philippine |
Marvic Leonen said the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s (MILF) rejection of government’s proposal did not mean the peace talks hosted by Malaysia from 2001 had collapsed and that both both sides were still open to continue negotiations.
The disagreement, however, puts the brakes on President Beningo Aquino and MILF leader Murad Ebrahim’s agreement to fast track the peace process following their secret meeting in a Tokyo hotel on August 4.
“It is not unusual in negotiations for one party to take a hardline position,” Leonen told a video conference from the Philippines’ embassy in Kuala Lumpur
“The two parties have different positions, otherwise, we will not be negotiating. Our framework is not as they had expected it. They expected something more, they expected the word sub-state,” he added.
The 11,000-member MILF seeks a “state within a state” on the southern island of Mindanao as a condition for ending four decades of armed conflict that has stymied development in this poor but resource rich region.
President Benigno Aquino has attempted to expand on the demand with his 20-page proposal for a “more genuine” autonomy that was presented to the Muslim separatist group this week in Kuala Lumpur.
The rebel negotiators said they will recommend to the MILF leadership to reject the proposal but they did not return the document, Leonen said, signalling that the peace process had not reached a stalemate.
“We can’t accept a proposal that we think will not address the problems of Muslims in Mindanao,” Ghadzali Jaafar, MILF vice chairman for political affairs, told a television interview from his base in the south.
But he added the rejection “does not mean a collapse of the talks”.
“We are not saying the negotiations are over. We are studying their proposal,” he said.
Chief Philippine government negotiator Marvic Leonen told reporters Manila was hopeful the two sides could build upon the proposal, whose full details remain under wraps.
“It is important to note they did not walk out; they did not return the paper,” Leonen said. “We will expect that the process will continue in the search for a common ground.” Leonen said the government plan calls for massive aid and economic development to Muslim conflict regions, a political settlement with the MILF and a mechanism for possible amendments to a law that created the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao in the 1990s.
The ARMM, which groups five Muslim provinces in the country’s troubled south, was created in the 1980s to accommodate the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).
The MNLF was at the time the country’s largest Muslim rebel group, from which the MILF splintered in 1978.
The MNLF signed a peace deal with Manila in 1996, and its leader was made the head of the ARMM, but the government described it as a “failed experiment” in documents outlining the new peace proposal.
After presenting the proposal to rebel negotiators Monday, Manila said in a statement the rebels must first lay down their arms and warned that a peace pact was likely years away. Leonen declined to release full details of the plan, saying that doing so could hinder the government’s flexibility in future talks.
The talks have been held on a recurring basis in Malaysia for more than a decade. Monday’s proposal was the first by the government since the Supreme Court in 2008 outlawed another proposed autonomy deal that would have given the MILF control over 700 towns and villages in the south, including some Christian areas.
In retaliation, two senior MILF rebels launched attacks across the south that left about 400 dead and displaced 750,000. Reuters