Malaysia to continue helping monitor ceasefire

COTABATO CITY — Malaysian Deputy Defense Minister Dato Hadji Abidin Zainal acknowledged that it is costly to maintain a peacekeeping contingent in Mindanao, but gave assurance that his government would continue with such a mission in the spirit of international cooperation and for lasting peace in the South to set in.

Zainal arrived here Thursday, on board a Malaysian Air Force plane from Kuala Lumpur, to inspect the Malaysian military contingent helping monitor the ceasefire in many flashpoint areas in Central Mindanao and surrounding regions.

Zainal said he is elated with how the international monitoring team and ceasefire committees of the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have been helping each other enforce the ceasefire in supposedly hostile areas in the South.

The international monitoring team is composed of soldiers and policemen from Malaysia, Brunei and Libya, all member-states of the Organization of Islamic Conference.

Zainal called on the negotiators of both the government and the MILF to continue resolving, in the "spirit of mutual cooperation," the remaining thorny topics of the peace talks.

The peace process began on Jan. 7, 1997, but gained momentum only three years ago with the involvement of Malaysia as mediator.

Malaysia, Brunei and Libya have been sustaining the needs of the international monitoring team without any support from the OIC, whose members include big petroleum-exporting countries in the Middle East.

"A friend in need is a friend indeed," said Zainal when asked if the deployment of the international monitoring team here is an added financial burden for the Malaysian government.

At least 44 of the team’s 60 members are Malaysian military and police officers.

The Malaysian government pays each of them almost the same professional fee which the United Nations gives members of international peacekeeping forces deployed in conflict-wracked countries.

Even so, Zainal said the Malaysian government is still ready to help further the Mindanao peace process.

"All must work together to achieve peace in Mindanao," he said.