"The most civilized and practical way to solve the Moro problem is through a negotiated political settlement," said Ebrahim Murad in a press statement that was posted on the pro-MILF website luwaran.com.

Murad said the MILF was "ready to resume the stalled formal peace talks with the government anytime."

It was also "ready to sign with the government a negotiated political solution that is just, lasting and comprehensive in order to terminate the age-old conflict in Mindanao," the statement said.

Negotiations between the government and the MILF, which broke away from the mainstream Moro National Liberation Front of Nur Misuari in the 1980s, were supposed to resume this month but Malacañang said the other day the talks would have to be delayed until November

when the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan ends.

Ramadan is scheduled to start on Oct. 16 and will last for 30 days. Devout Muslims engage in prayer and fasting during this period.

MILF spokesperson Eid Kabalu confirmed the veracity of the Murad statement.

He said Murad was scheduled to meet with a select group of reporters at an undisclosed site in Maguindanao province sometime yesterday to issue the same message.

It was to be Murad's first major press conference since assuming the leadership of the MILF upon the death of the group's founder, Salamat Hashim, last year.

In his statement, Murad warned that peace-making was not as easy as some people think.

"It is war minus the bullets and bombs. It [takes] two parties to the conflict to collaborate to make peace but only one to make war," he said.

Ghazali Jaafar, the MILF's vice chair for political affairs, said that while the rebel group was willing to sign a negotiated settlement, it could not accept autonomy as a political solution to the Muslim rebellion.

Malacañang has drafted a proposal to end the conflict in which it suggested the expansion of the coverage of the five-province and one-city Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

The ARMM covers the provinces of Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi and Marawi City.

Jaafar said the MILF cannot accept autonomy because it has been proven in the MNLF experience that this would not solve the Moro problem.

The MNLF, the main Muslim insurgency, embraced the ARMM system when it signed a peace agreement with the administration of President Fidel Ramos in 1996.

Jaafar said that aside from causing demoralization in the ranks of the MNLF, the peace agreement has had no significant achievements to boast of.

He said the MILF has drafted its own proposal for ending the conflict but declined to elaborate on it.