Philippine’s peace pact in limbo
Posted by page11 on April 22, 2008
More than a decade after signing the peace agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the Philippines government said, it will take more time to implement the pact. The government panel actually brought out some of its proposals during previous meetings with the MNLF and the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) but didn’t come out with specific details.
The Philippine government, the MNLF and the Organization have been working on a possible amendment on the 1996 peace accord after the former complained that the truce was not fully implemented. Jess Dureza, presidential adviser on the peace process said – “It will take time, but we are hopeful,”. “There is a scheduled tripartite meeting this May, and we believe several other constructive proposals will come out.” – he added.
The former rebel group, whose leaders are from Sulu, also said the autonomous region was not given enough power despite the existence of the peace agreement. The Organization of Islamic Conference recently said, the government and the former Muslim separatists are making progress toward implementing a peace accord granting autonomy to Filipino Muslims in the south.
The influential Muslim organization said it is now counting on the government and the MNLF to come up with proposals on amending the 1996 peace agreement, which ended decades of fighting and led to the creation of an autonomous region for Muslims.
The Organization, MNLF, and the Philippine government representatives are expected to submit a report to the Organization of Islamic Conference next month on possible amendments for the autonomy to be fully realized. Government and MNLF negotiators said they are just finalizing the documents and will come up with a combined report after the tripartite meeting. The tripartite meeting is aimed at discussing issues concerning the implementation of the Conference-mediated 1996 peace agreement.
Parties working on the agreement were supposed to meet on January 14 2008, but the Organization of Islamic Conference failed to send its representative for unknown reasons. The meeting was tentatively rescheduled on May 12, 2008 in Manila. Both the Philippine government and the MNLF agreed to create a joint working group, a body composed of government and MNLF representatives to look into the complaints of the former rebels.
