'Order followers home then we can talk' - Palace to Kiram

From InterAksyon (Feb 28): 'Order followers home then we can talk' - Palace to Kiram

Malacanang on Thursday said Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram III must first order his followers home from Sabah before President Benigno Aquino III agrees to talk to him, urging him not to waste the “golden opportunity.”

"They want to see the President. They want to talk to the President and the President said: ‘You come home, let’s defuse the situation, let’s try to avoid bloodshed, and we will talk’," Palace spokesman Edwin Lacierda said in a briefing aired over state-run Radyo ng Bayan on Thursday.

Close to 200 of the sultan’s followers, led by his brother Raja Muda Agbimuddin Kiram, occupied the village of Tanduo in Lahad Datu town in a bid to press their claim on Sabah and have since been engaged in a standoff with Malaysian security forces.
Lacierda called Kiram’s demand for negotiations before ordering his followers home "unreasonable."

"Assuming for the sake of argument (that) we will talk to them while they don’t leave Sabah. We will talk to the Malaysians and the Malaysians will not agree to what the Kirams want, do we have a guarantee they will come back (to Sulu)? There is no guarantee," Lacierda said.

In a radio interview from Sabah, Kiram's brother insisted they had broken no law since the territory has historically and legally belonged to Sulu.

"We are not bad -- we are good people. We are law-abiding citizens. We came here to live in our place. That's not a crime," he said.

"We did not come to make war, we just came to live in our own place. If the problem is we bring guns with us, these are for our protection," he added.

Earlier this week, after saying he had ordered the creation of a panel to study the Sabah issue, Aquino ordered the investigation of Kiram and his followers for possible violations of the Constitution and of the Revised Penal Code.

http://www.interaksyon.com/article/56066/order-followers-home-then-we-can-talk---palace-to-kiram