Arroyo hails truce with rebels, asks neighbor to invest
Arroyo hails truce with rebels, asks neighbor to invest
KUALA LUMPUR (Agencies): President Gloria Arroyo on Wednesday welcomed the formal ceasefire pact with the Philippines' main Muslim guerrilla group and pledged to develop the poverty-struck south.
Arroyo said she was happy to be in Kuala Lumpur to personally receive news of the peace accord signed with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the Malaysian capital on Tuesday.
"This new government is committed in settling the issue of security. It is committed to lasting peace in Mindanao and to bring Mindanao to the mainstream of development," Arroyo said. "Peace negotiations for a final settlement are ongoing," she said at a business luncheon.
The pact between Manila and the MILF, sealed after days of intensive talks, raised hopes of peace and development coming to the desperately poor Mindanao island, which is home to the Philippines' Muslim minority.
The ceasefire expanded the scope of a preliminary accord reached in Libya in June, as Arroyo's eight-month-old government steps up efforts to end the three-decade-long Muslim insurgency in the southern Philippines.
Arroyo urged Malaysian businessmen to invest in Mindanao, especially in palmoil cultivation.
"Mindanao is an island hungry for development, an island with an enormous desire to move forward. We will make Mindanao a gateway to Southeast Asia through the East Asian growth area," the president said.
"We hope that together, we can tap the many opportunities in Mindanao, provide jobs and increase economic wealth there."
Arroyo said Manila would prepare 160,000 hectares of land in the southern Philippines for palmoil cultivation, a move which she said would create about one million jobs.
"I will provide stronger attention to Mindanao," she pledged, announcing a plan to visit the southern island weekly.
Arroyo said she would fly to the Mindanao city of Davao on Thursday from Malaysia.
Meanwhile, the Philippine military said on Wednesday that it hoped to end the threat from Abu Sayyaf kidnappers by November despite the advantages held by the gunmen on the forested, mountainous island where they are based.
Armed forces chief General Diomedio Villanueva told Manila radio dzRH he had presented "a timetable of objectives" to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's cabinet for sustained operations against the self-styled rebels, who are holding two American and 17 Filipino hostages on southern Basilan island.
"We are moving in fresh troops and rotating commanders so that we can respond to the situation," he said. "I hope that we will be able to degrade (their capability) to the maximum by November."
Villanueva did not explain how the military arrived at the November target date or how the troops would counter the problems of terrain and logistics, both of which favor the Abu Sayyaf.
An army spokesman earlier said the plan called for the deployment of hundreds of civilian fighters, trained and armed by the military, on Basilan within a few weeks.
The civilian militia would augment some 7,000 troops who have been pursuing the Abu Sayyaf, which has an estimated 1,000 fighters, for more than 10 weeks on the mountainous island.
Some Abu Sayyaf groups, who use proceeds from past ransoms to buy loyalty among villagers, also operate on nearby Jolo island.
Army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Jose Calimlim said last week the problems on Basilan were enormous.
"No matter how many battalions you deploy, we cannot cordon the whole place," he said. "The terrain is so vast, too densely forested and mountainous. The terrain is to their advantage."
The Abu Sayyaf professes to fight for an Islamic state in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic Philippines.
It abducted three Americans and 17 Filipinos from a tourist resort off Palawan island on May 27 and took them to Basilan, its traditional power base where it enjoys support among the largely Muslim population of 200,000.