Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Jesus Dureza on
Thursday welcomed as “positive” the convergence of the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front (MILF) and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in putting closure
to the Mindanao conflict.
The MILF and the largest of three MNLF factions, led by
former Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema, had twice forged in recent months a
deal binding both camps to find a common solution to the now 45-year Moro
rebellion.
Sema’s group has more than 20 “revolutionary states”
scattered across the country’s south and in all of the five component provinces
of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
“There is an apparent convergence and inclusivity now in
each other’s peace-building initiatives. This is what we want, a peace process
involving all stakeholders,” Dureza said Thursday at the sidelines of his
breakfast meeting with MILF Chairman Hadji Murad Ebrahim.
The two-hour meeting was held at Camp Darapanan
It was the first official engagement between the MILF and
Malacañang under President Rodrigo R. Duterte.
They talked about the prospects of the peace process under
the Duterte administration and agreed to resume with all bilateral initiatives
complementing all compacts between the MILF and Malacañang, stalled by the
recent synchronized local and national elections.
Dureza said he finds beneficial to the peace process the
convergence of the MILF and the MNLF-Sema group in a common formula for a
lasting peace in the south.
The MILF and the MNLF-Sema group had earlier said, in
bilateral press communiqués, their initiatives are meant to synchronize each
other’s concepts on how to best address the Mindanao Moro issue.
Through the intercession of the Organization of Islamic
Cooperation (OIC), the MNLF and Malacañang signed on Sept. 2, 1996 a final
peace deal, after 20 years of negotiations that started in 1976.
The MNLF was yet a solidly monolithic organization then, led
by its founding chairman, Nur Misuari.
The group got fragmented in 2000 when a bloc of Misuari’s
lieutenants, among them Sema and many other MNLF leaders in the ARMM’s five
provinces, broke away due to loss of confidence in his leadership.
There is a third MNLF group that emerged recently, led by
Abulkhayr Alonto, who hails from Lanao del Sur. Unlike the MNLF-Sema group,
Misuari and his men are hostile to the MILF.
They have been ranting on what is for them “abrogation” of
the government-MNLF peace agreement with Malacañang’s having crafted two
compacts with the MILF, the Oct. 15, 2013 Framework Agreement on Bangsamoro
and, subsequently, the March 27, 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro.
Sema said he is grateful to Dureza for his optimism on the
MILF-MNLF convergence, which the OIC, a bloc of more than 50 Muslim states,
including petroleum-exporting countries in the Middle East and North Africa , has also been supporting.
The MILF and the MNLF-Sema group now have a joint technical
committee tasked to study a common approach in resolving the Moro problem.
Sema said the committee will meet in Cotabato City
The MILF-MNLF convergence was first espoused by the
erstwhile president of Libya ,
the late Muammar Gaddafi, who even sent his son, Saiful A-Islam Al-Gaddafi, to Mindanao twice in the late 1990s to help unite both
fronts.
Gaddafi was a staunch supporter of the peace overture
between Malacañang and the MNLF, which he provided with firearms and ammunition
while fighting the government in the 1970s.
http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=1&sid=&nid=1&rid=906368
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