Panels talking with interested countries to compose ICG, new IMT to be formed

Formal talks with MILF “very imminent”

DAVAO CITY – Chances were high of a new meeting in formal negotiation between the panels of government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), government and guerrilla leaders said after their third informal meeting led to a signing of an additional agreement on the protection of civilians from any aggressive or offensive actions by any of them.

“It’s highly imminent,” government chief negotiator, and Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Rafael Seguis said on October 30 at the Waterfront Insular Hotel Davao, after President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo also received the result of the Mindanao consultations on peace initiated and undertaken by the Bishops-Ulama Conference (BUC) this year.

Secretary Annabelle Abaya, chief of the government’s Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, separately told reporters that the formal meeting may take place soonest in December this year.

Seguis also said that that meeting could happen within the next six weeks at the earliest but expressed reservation that the date could drag on until both parties could smoothen out the composition of an international contact group (ICG).

The ICG was a separate group that the MILF has previously wished to be formed to ascertain that any new agreement between the two parties becomes internationally binding. It was made a condition after the MILF expressed dismay that the mutually crafted Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain (MOA-AD), which the two panels placed their initials as indication of agreement, was eventually shelved and declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in August last year.

Malacanang, whose Cabinet Cluster E on security has been consulted every step of the way towards the formulation of the agreement, also distanced itself and rejected the document, and later scuttled its peace panel.

Both panels have started talking, either jointly or separately, with countries that might be interested to join the ICG, and Seguis said that the composition should be mutually agreed also by both panels.

Government has already talked with four countries but Seguis said they could not yet send formal invitation until both panels could clarify certain issues, including their role, if they were there to be advisers only or to support the talks. He declined to disclose the countries being tapped.

Gadzali Jaafar, MILF vice chairman for political affairs, also confirmed to BusinessMirror of a likelihood of a formal meeting after the three informal meetings they have conducted since June.

“That’s the assessment of Secretary Seguis of a very imminent formal talks. To us, we can only say that it is very possible,” he said in an interview from his mobile phone on Sunday.

He said that the MILF would be concerned first on the ironing out of the composition and the giving of the mandate to the ICG, as well as the reconstitution of the same International Monitoring Team led by Malaysia.

“We have identified these countries, but yes, I would agree with Seguis that we have to keep on exploring for others until we can get their confirmation,” he said.

He disagreed with Seguis’s view however, when Seguis told reporters here, that government would have a new IMT “because the old IMT has already finished its [tour of duty] last year”.

“It’s mandate was not renewed, and thus they have to leave, because the talks have also collapsed that year. So we would have to seek another IMT,” he said. the old IMT was formed by Malaysia with military experts from Brunei and Libya and a lone economic expert from Japan comprising the 57-person team. The IMT has a mandate of only monitoring and investigating incidence of violations of the ceasefire.

Jaafar said however, that they would prefer the same IMT and would negotiate with the panel to agree to it. “Anyway, Malaysia did not say officially and privately that it would discontinue the mission of the IMT. We would like to renew that mandate,” he said.

“We would like to settle these two issues first, the ICG and the IMT, before we would conduct formal talks. We don’t like to leave unattended these two issues when we go to the negotiation table,” he said. “That’s why we can not say for certain when we would be starting the formal talks.”

Asked to comment on the MOA-AD, Jaafar said that “that’s already moot and academic now that we are meeting”.

“It remains there. It has been initialled. We have not discarded it,” he said.