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DAVAO
CITY—The Presidential Peace Adviser, Jesus Dureza, said
upon arrival from Colombia on Monday that, “peaceful
arrangements are being pursued to preserve the gains of
the peace process even as the government forces run
after the suspected terrorist groups in Sulu.”
He was
responding to expressions of worry from the public
relayed to him by journalists on the impact on the peace
talks of the punitive expedition of the military against
those who beheaded several Marines that they killed in
an ambush.
Dureza
said the government panel has been working closely all
the time with its counterpart in the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front “to preserve the gains of the peace
process.”
Earlier,
the MILF publicly thanked the World Bank and the
governments of Canada and Japan for warning the
Philippines not to broaden the operations in Basilan.
Dureza
has just come from sharing the Philippines experience in
dealing with rebels in an international conference in
Colombia, which is itself beset by two rebel forces.
He said
the cease-fire committees of the government and the MILF
have made arrangements for guerrilla forces, “which are
in the vicinity of the military operations against
terrorist groups, to move to an area of temporary stay
to prevent any accidental AFP-MILF confrontation that
could exacerbate the situation.”
“We
are, in fact, witnessing the mechanism of the peace
process working effectively on the ground now that the
AFP and the MILF are avoiding a head-on collision.”
Dureza
added that President Arroyo has met with Autonomous
Region in Muslim Mindanao Gov. Zaldy Ampatuan, during
which she “gave instructions for the progression of
humanitarian interventions in the area.”
The
Department of Social Welfare and Development placed the
number of affected families to be about 1,800.
As calls mounted for a halt to military operations and
to move instead to the negotiating table, Dureza said
the operations against the Abu Sayyaf was “outside the
ambit of the peace process [and] consistent with the
government’s policy to hit hard on bandits and
terrorists.”
In its
statement Monday posted on its web site, the MILF
“expressed satisfaction over the peace overtures of the
World Bank, Canada and Japan during the height of the
Basilan crisis, which the government used to threaten
the MILF with a third all-out war.”
“The
World Bank, Canada and Japan had warned the Arroyo
administration that they would stop their development
aid to Mindanao and would pull out their workers there
once the government makes true its threat to launch an
all-out war against the MILF, instead of resolving the
conflict in Basilan through the mechanism of the peace
process and cease-fire,” according to MILF vice chairman
for political affairs Ghazali Jaafar, who was quoted in
the statement.
Jaafar
had also urged the WB, and the ambassadors of the two
countries “to use their good offices in
Manila to convince the Arroyo administration to fast-track the
peace talks” and cited the long process that went into
the negotiations, which started in 1997.
“We are
worried by the impatience of the young and the idealists
once a peace deal is not forthcoming,” he said, though
Jaafar declared “the present leadership of the MILF is
not only experienced, but also very reasonable.”
Jaafar
said that
Japan
had joined the cease-fire International Monitoring Team
while Canada has submitted a note verbale asking to join
the IMT. The World Bank has already undertaken various
projects in Mindanao in coordination with the Bangsamoro
Development Agency, and has administered the Mindanao
Trust Fund. |
