Peace mission seeks non-military solution to Moro conflict

Peace mission seeks non-military solution to Moro conflict

Oliver Teves, Associated Press, Manila

Members of an international peace mission said on Friday they
will seek a non-military alternative to a U.S.-Philippine
campaign against a Moro extremist group holding an American
couple and a Filipino hostage on a southern island.

Ongoing military training aimed at wiping out the extremist
Abu Sayyaf group involves 660 U.S. soldiers, including 160 from
the Special Forces who have been deployed with front-line
Filipino soldiers hunting the guerrillas on Basilan island. The
U.S. soldiers are not allowed to engage in combat.

The 14-member mission includes peace and human rights
advocates, parliamentarians and Muslim scholars from the
Philippines, the United States, France, Ireland, Japan,
Australia, India, Britain, Thailand and Italy.

The peace mission will make an "independent assessment" of the
impact of the conflict, which has become the "second front" of
the U.S. global war against terrorism, said Philippine sociology
professor Walden Bello.

"We would like to express our solidarity with all the
communities that have been affected by the violence, but we also
want to express the fact ... that the record of military
solutions to such phenomena as the Abu Sayyaf is very poor,"
Bello said.

Bello said the group wants to "create a space for dialog"
among the various communities affected by the conflict, dealing
with economic injustice and cultural and religious discrimination
in one of the Philippines' poorest provinces.

Earl Martin, an instructor at the Eastern Mennonite University
in Harrisonburg, Virginia, who lived in the Philippines' southern
Mindanao region in the 1980s, said he wanted to listen to, grieve
with and pray for victims of violence on Basilan.

However, he said the Abu Sayyaf problem had been
oversimplified.

"There is no love lost for those who terrorize others or those
who kidnap others against their will," Martin said. "But always,
as we enter into this situation, we discover they are more
complex than the characterization often given in the brief
stories we read."

The peace mission will be in Basilan from Saturday to Tuesday.
Members have sought meetings with Philippine and U.S. military
and civilian officials and local Catholic and Muslim religious
leaders.

Bello said the government asked them to postpone their visit
because of security concerns.

The group will also visit the Basilan provincial jail where
some Abu Sayyaf suspects are held and attend a congressional
hearing on alleged human rights violations in the military
campaign.

Last year, the Abu Sayyaf seized dozens of hostages, including
three Americans, and evaded a massive military operation
involving thousands of troops.

Most hostages escaped or were released for ransom. Some have
been killed, including Guillermo Sobero of Corona, California,
who was beheaded. Those still in rebel hands are Martin and
Gracia Burnham of Wichita, Kansas, and Basilan nurse Ediborah
Yap.