Manila to Raise MILF ‘Terror’ Attacks With OIC
Mama Gubal & Agencies

COTABATO CITY/MANILA, 8 May 2003 — President Gloria Arroyo yesterday urged the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to denounce “terrorism” and surrender killers from their ranks if the shelved peace talks are to resume.

Arroyo also said the Philippines would “bring its case before Malaysia and Indonesia, the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) and the whole Islamic world,” regarding the threat of the MILF.

“We shall combine military action, stringent legal measures, community preparedness and full diplomatic pressure to bear upon this threat,” the president said in a statement.

“We shall not appease those who kill and maim the innocent. We shall not allow the peace talks to be held hostage by the threat of terror,” she added.

Arroyo canceled preliminary talks aimed at ending the decades-old rebellion on Tuesday in reaction to a series of deadly attacks by the MILF on civilian targets in the south, notably in the town of Siocon, Zamboanga del Norte on Sunday.

She offered 50 million pesos in reward money for information leading to the arrest of five top MILF leaders blamed for the attacks that have left at least 83 people dead and hundreds wounded since March, and authorized the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) to launch “punitive” action against the rebels.

“No more double talk. The MILF must unequivocally and unambiguously renounce terrorism in the pursuit of its objectives,” and surrender “all those who have engaged in terrorist acts before expecting any relief from legal sanctions and punitive actions,” she said.

Jesus Dureza, the presidential assistant for Mindanao and the government’s chief peace negotiator, said the atmosphere for negotiations would return to normal only if the MILF ended its “atrocities.”

“If these terrorist attacks on civilian communities were stopped, the climate for peace negotiation will continue. As we have been doing in the past, we are always open,” Dureza said.

Malaysia was to have hosted the May 9 to 11 talks in Kuala Lumpur.

The OIC, including the Philippines’ neighbors Malaysia and Indonesia, had been fostering contact between the government and the MILF.

Ebrahim Murad, the MILF military affairs chief who heads the rebels’ negotiating panel, said the group was still “committed to peace negotiation.”

“It is not true that our group perpetrates all the trouble in Mindanao. What we want here is that before the resumption of the talks, government will implement what has been agreed on in the past,” Murad said in Cotabato City.

Norberto Gonzales, the presidential adviser on special concerns, said he believes the MILF was not behind the troubles.

“What Murad said is true. I would like to inform the MILF that the government is not stopping the investigation. The government knows that not all incidents in Mindanao are perpetrated by MILF. At the same time, the government knows that there is a third group that wants to destroy the government’s efforts at bringing peace and development in Mindanao,” Gonzales said.

MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu yesterday chided the military for immediately blaming the MILF for the bombing of a gymnasium in Pikit town of North Cotabato, where refugees from fighting last February were being housed. Eight evacuees were injured when a grenade exploded on the gymnasium’s roof at 10 p.m. Monday night.

Kabalu said the MILF has no reason to do that because many of the evacuees are related in one way or the other to some of their fighters. He accused the military of bombing the gymnasium in an attempt to turn the refugees against the separatist group.

MILF political affairs chief Ghazali Jaafar also said no MILF guerrilla was involved in the assault on a farming community in Kabacan town, North Cotabato on Tuesday morning. The military earlier blamed separatists for the attack, which killed three Muslim residents of Barangay Kayaga. Three other people, including a 12-year-old girl, were wounded in the attack.

But Jaafar said the violence was an apparent offshoot of a feud between the attackers and some of the villagers, who are mostly members of the Moro National Liberation Front guerrillas who had laid down their firearms.

On Tuesday, US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone said his government may include the MILF in its list of terrorist organizations if it continued attacking civilians and taking hostages.

But legislators yesterday accused Ricciardone of interfering in the internal affairs of the Philippines. Sen. Joker Arroyo said Ricciardone should be summoned and asked “to explain why he was preempting the Philippine government.”

Arroyo and opposition Sen. Aquilino Pimentel said such a declaration would pave the way for the “full-scale involvement” of the US in the government’s war against the MILF.