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DAVAO CITY—The
Libyan government has agreed to send 25 cease-fire
monitoring personnel “to assist and sustain the
cease-fire in Mindanao,” Presidential Peace Adviser
Jesus Dureza said late Monday.
Dureza
said he received “an overseas call from Secretary Bert
Gonzales, who is in Tripoli, that the Libyan government
will send an initial contingent of four monitors.”
The
immediate addition of four personnel would beef up the
current Libyan contingent of six personnel assigned to
the International Monitoring Team (IMT) site in Iligan
City in Lanao del Norte, and would complete the
10-member contingent Libya committed in 2004, according
to the statement released by the Office of the
Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (Opapp).
“We
welcome this good news,” Dureza said, and hoped that
“all sectors will welcome this positive development”
following the flurry of warnings raised after the
pullout of the Malaysian contingent in the IMT last
Saturday.
Last
Saturday
Malaysia
pulled out 29 of its 41 IMT personnel, including its
head of mission who has retired from the Malaysian Armed
Forces. Only 26 soldiers and a lone Japanese civilian
economic expert remained: 12 Malaysians, 10 Brunei, five
Libyans. This IMT contingent formed the Batch 4 of the
IMT comprising 57 international peacekeepers, whose
presence was only until August 31 this year.
It was
Malaysia which formed the IMT and began to be stationed
in 2004.
Dureza
said government would “continue to hope for Libya’s
sustained and deepening participation in the IMT.”
He
added, however, that the actual deployment of the fresh
Libyan addition to the IMT would have “to depend on
mutually agreed arrangements with the proper levels of
the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).”
But
Mohagher Iqbal, MILF chief negotiator, did not say how
the MILF looked at the Libyan gesture but told
BusinessMirror in a phone interview Tuesday in his base
somewhere in Central Mindanao that the government was
deflecting the issue of the peace process in Mindanao.
“That’s
[additional Libyan contingent] a non-issue; it’s how to
proceed with the peace process and eventually sign a
peace agreement,” he said. “It only shows how government
is only interested in that ceasefire rather than
pursuing a peace settlement.” |
