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Ramos aide meets Misuari

| Source: AFP

Ramos aide meets Misuari

MANILA (AFP): President Fidel Ramos' chief aide held
unannounced talks with the top leader of the Moslem insurgency in
the southern Philippines last weekend in an attempt to speed up
peace negotiations, government officials said yesterday.

Nur Misuari, whose Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) is
holding peace talks with the government, met separately with
Executive Secretary Ruben Torres and Interior Secretary Rafael
Alunan in the eastern town of Maasin on Saturday, Torres
announced here.

Torres said he and Misuari were classmates in school, and that
President Fidel Ramos had instructed him to meet the rebel leader
to reiterate "the seriousness of the president in reaching an
early agreement to the peace talks."

The MNLF is now seeking autonomy on behalf of the large Moslem
minority in the southern Philippines after a failed separatist
uprising in the early 1970s.

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