Some 30 leaders of three MNLF factions – Executive Council, Islamic Command Council (ICC) and Isnaji wing — met at the Azenith Hotel here on Oct. 2-3 to firm up plans for the union with the MILF now headed by its new chairman, Al-Hajj Murad Ebrahim.

Only the Nur Misuari group was not present at the two-day meeting attended members of MNLF’s Batch 300, but the source said the details of the planned union would be relayed to them. He said a member of the MILF secretariat in Basilan also attended the meeting. 

“The government had succeeded in its divide-and-rule strategy. Now we have awaken from a long stupor,” the Isnaji wing official said.  “Officials of the four MNLF factions will convene again during the Ramadan season in a bid to push through the union with the MILF,” he added. 

He said this is the time to consolidate the various batches of the MNLF trainees who took jungle warfare and military training on Jampiras Island in Malaysia in the 60s and 70s.

Mohagher Iqbal, MILF chief negotiator and information committee chairman, welcomed the new development. 

“Unity must be based on common agenda. But there must be no preconditions for acceptance. This is a welcome development,” Iqbal said. 

It was recalled that the MILF was a faction of the MNLF that broke away in 1977 after then MILF founder Ustadhz Salamat Hashim developed irreconcillable differences with Misuari, then chairman of monolithic MNLF.