MILF seeks foreign support as `thorny` talks loom

Mohagher Iqbal, chief peace negotiator of the rebels, asserted that future negotiations wouldn‘t be that easy for the forging a final peace agreement possibly by next year.

Muhammad Ameen, MILF secretariat head, said the participation of the international community is crucial in the success of the peace talks by way of a constructive engagement with both the government and the MILF.

"They can be effective stabilizers especially if one or the two parties feel resorting to a more radical approach," he said in a statement.

Ameen said the international community can play an active but non-partisan role that could push the parties to adopt flexible negotiating positions, leading to more and more understanding or even concessions.

But he stressed that Malaysia‘s role as major peace facilitator must not be infringed, saying that Kuala Lumpur‘s role as mediator has yielded significant results to the satisfaction of both parties.

Ameen explained that the development projects being implemented in the conflict-affected areas in Mindanao by Japan, the United States, and other donor countries and the World Bank are good and welcome development but can boomerang if the political aspect of the talks stagnates.

For more than one year since September 2006, the talks have been suspended owing to the widely diverging positions of the government and the MILF that had almost sent them to war on various occasions.

Already yielding a helping hand to the talks, in various shades, are Malaysia, Libya, Brunei, Japan, Canada, Sweden, the United States, and the European Union.

The deadlock, brought by differing positions on the ancestral domain agenda particularly the strand on territory, was only broken recently.

However, specific details of the meeting have yet to be fully disclosed by the parties.

So far, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has not taken a direct hand in the 10-year-old government-MILF peace talks.

Observers said it could be due to the fact that the OIC facilitated the government-Moro National Liberation Front final peace agreement in September 1996.

The core areas for the MILF‘s proposed Bangsamoro Juridical Entity lie in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, which was ceded to the MNLF with the forging of the 1996 final peace agreement.

Meanwhile, Iqbal stressed that the road ahead for the peace process "will still be full of twists and turns that can easily overturn the direction of the talks."

"Expect more and more deadlocks in the future," he warned, but added that "with a solid organization and the support of the international community, the road ahead is not hopeless."

Source: www.sunstar.com
Credit Phot : www.flickr.com

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