Agencies/Manila
The Philippines and a Muslim separatist group hope to finalise a peace agreement ending a decades-old insurgency by April, a government negotiator said yesterday.
Manila and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) are working to put the finishing touches to plans for disarmament and wealth- and power-sharing by March, and deliver a final “comprehensive agreement” in April, Miriam Coronel Ferrer said.
“We are confident. There are only a few issues left. We will find a resolution. There is no deal-breaker here,” said Coronel Ferrer, the Philippines’ lead negotiator.
She spoke at the conclusion of the latest round of three-day talks between the two sides in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur. The talks ended with the two sides signing one of four annexes needed to complete their comprehensive peace pact.
The panels signed the six-page “Annex on Transitional Arrangements and Modalities” which specifies, among others, that the Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) would be “MILF-led.”
According to the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro (FAB) which the panels signed in Malacanang on October 15 last year, the BTA, which would take over from the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) as soon as the Basic Law of the new autonomous political entity called “Bangsamoro” is promulgated and ratified and will govern the area until the elected officials of the new Bangsamoro government take over on June 30, 2016. Also signed were the terms of reference for the Independent Commission on Policing (ICP), the body that would submit recommendations to the peace panels on the police force for the Bangsamoro.
Philippine President Benigno Aquino’s government agreed in October on a road map with the MILF that aims toward a final peace deal by 2016, following years of talks hosted by Malaysia.
Coronel Ferrer said a stand-off between Malaysian security forces and a group of Filipinos in the eastern Malaysian state of Sabah would not affect the peace process.
Dozens of Filipinos, some reportedly armed, were dispatched there two weeks ago by the self-proclaimed heir to a former southern Philippine sultanate to press its traditional claim to Sabah.
