MANILA: The Philippine government and the country’s largest Muslim rebel group said yesterday they had wrapped up talks aimed at ensuring the terms of a landmark peace deal would be enacted into law.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (Milf) signed the peace agreement in March, but it fell into serious question amid a row over a draft law to create a Muslim self-rule area in the south of the mainly Catholic nation.
“After a series of productive meetings... we have concluded discussions on the various issues involving the draft Basic Bangsamoro Law,” President Benigno Aquino’s chief aide Paquito Ochoa and chief Milf negotiator Mohagher Iqbal said in a joint statement.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front is a Moro and Lumad group formed in the 1960s following the Jabidah massacre to achieve greater Bangsamoro autonomy in the southern Philippines.
A general cessation of hostilities between the government in Manila and the Milf was signed in July 1997 but this agreement was abolished in 2000 by the Philippine Army under the administration of Philippine President Joseph Estrada. In response, the Milf declared a jihad (strived and struggled) against the government, its citizens and supporters. Under President Gloria Arroyo, the government entered into a cease-fire agreement with the Milf and resumed peace talks.
The combined armies of the Milf and Abu Sayyaf were involved in days of fighting which necessitated government troops using heavy artillery to engage rebel forces. The Milf has been fighting since the 1970s for an independent or autonomous homeland for the nation’s Muslim minority in a conflict which has claimed tens of thousands of lives.
The Aquino government and the Milf signed an accord in March that laid out a roadmap for final peace by the middle of 2016.
The deal called for Milf control of a new southern autonomous region, and the rebels would lay down their arms.
AFP
