Manila to offer 'genuine autonomy' to Muslims at talks

Manila to offer 'genuine autonomy' to Muslims at talks

MANILA (Agencies): The Philippine government said on Wednesday
it will offer "genuine autonomy" to Muslims after their main
separatist group agreed to resume peace talks to end nearly three
decades of insurrection in the south.

But the authorities would not offer to return captured land
from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) at the talks to be
held in neighboring Malaysia, Vice-President and Foreign
Secretary Teofisto Guingona told a media forum.

He said that MILF territories in the southern island of
Mindanao, including the group's main Camp Abubakar, captured
during ousted president Joseph Estrada's rule, would not be
returned to the rebels because it was not theirs.

"The camps, mainly Abubakar and the one in Lanao del Sur
(province), Camp Bushra, are not really military camps that
should be returned, they will not be returned to the rebels,"
Guingona stressed.

He said the government wanted to convert the 10,000-hectare
(24,700-acre) Camp Abubakar into a "real farmland" for high-
valued crops to improve the lives of the huge civilian population
living within three municipalities inside the camp.

Camp Abubakar, several times bigger than Singapore, had been
the central headquarters of the MILF, which has waged an
intermittent 23-year guerrilla campaign to carve out an Islamic
state in the southern third of the largely Roman Catholic
Philippine archipelago.

The MILF is a splinter of the Moro National Liberation Front
(MNLF) which fought the government much earlier but signed a
peace treaty in 1996 and opted for limited self rule under a so-
called Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao.

The MNLF however has lamented that autonomy has been
effectively in name only.

Guingona said on Wednesday that the government would not
renege on its autonomy promise. "Real autonomy is what they want
and we intend to give that to them."

Estrada had ordered an all out assault on the MILF after peace
talks failed. The MILF retaliated with a "jihad" or holy war
leading to a series of deadly bombings.

Immediately after winning power in January, President Gloria
Arroyo offered the olive branch to the rebels. She announced a
breakthrough on Tuesday, saying MILF envoys had agreed in secret
talks with her aides in Malaysia to resume negotiations and for
the rebels to declare a cease-fire. A date for the talks had yet
to be set.

Sincere move

Guingona, who comes from Mindanao, said on Wednesday that if
the Muslims could understand that the government's peace effort
was a sincere move and intended to help them "the old biases
between Muslims and Christians may fade".

He said the "substance" of a prospective peace agreement with
the MILF "will consist of a sincere recognition of the root
causes of the conflict and common solutions to the conflict".

He ruled out secession or independence for the Muslims, saying
Filipinos would have to "live as neighbors" within the autonomous
area.

Asked to elaborate on the autonomy plan, Guingona said one of
its vital aspects was "fiscal autonomy" where the regional
government would have the right to manage its own resources.

"Akin to this would be the right to exercise their own
culture, religion and ways of life," he said.

But Guingona said one of the issues being ironed out was the
implementation of criminal Islamic or Shariah law in an
autonomous region.

"We are studying moderate Shariah laws that can be a
compatible relationship between our constitution and the Shariah
law of our Muslim brothers."

Eduardo Ermita, who represented the Philippine government,
said Malaysia helped arranged the exploratory talks and sent
observers to the meeting last week. Officials and rebels say the
Malaysia's crucial role make it the likely venue of planned
talks.

"There is now an agreement that we'll really push through with
the talks," Ermita told Manila radio station DZRH from Kuala
Lumpur.

Rebel spokesman Eid Kabalu said the MILF wants a member
country of the influential Organization of Islamic Conference
(OIC), such as Malaysia, to mediate the talks.

Indonesia, also a member of the OIC, brokered talks that
convinced the MNLF to drop their separatist goal and sign a peace
accord with the Philippine government.