Ermita: Government needs time to draft final MILF pact

COTABATO CITY – The government needs enough time to draft a final peace accord with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and thus, cannot agree outright with the MILF’s proposal to resume formal talks in Malaysia early next month, Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Eduardo Ermita said yesterday.

Ermita said the government is keen on offering to the MILF "a well-studied" package of solutions contained in a draft final peace pact, in the next round of talks.

However, Ermita, who also helped broker the Sept. 2, 1996 truce between the government and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), said they need ample time to come up with the draft peace agreement.

"If this draft is ready, we still have to submit it first to the Cabinet oversight committee for extensive evaluation before it can be submitted to the President for approval," he told Catholic radio station dxMS in a telephone interview from Manila.

MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu earlier said their central leadership recommended in a letter to the government that formal talks be resumed on Jan. 8 or 9 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, where previous meetings took place. Negotiations kicked off on Jan. 7, 1997.

The MILF, according to observers, could be apprehensive of the military’s continuing purge of criminal gangs holding out in its known territories.

The secessionist group, they said, may have called for the resumption of the peace talks to enable its peace panel to discuss security concerns in potential flashpoint areas where soldiers and rebel forces often clash even at the slightest provocation.

"It is always good for both sides to discuss all the security problems and all the thorny issues about the peace talks on the negotiating table," Kabalu said.

The MILF’s call for the immediate resumption of the peace talks came as the Army’s 6th Infantry Division here announced having received surrender feelers from more than a thousand Muslim guerrillas in Maguindanao and nearby provinces.