RP government offers Moros cease-fire
RP government offers Moros cease-fire
DAVAO, Philippines (AFP): The Philippine government has offered a cease-fire to a Moro rebel faction in the south, where businessmen pledged US$1.5 billion in investments despite security concerns, a guerrilla leader said yesterday.
Al Haj Murad, vice chairman for military affairs of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), said in the nearby city of Cotabato the offer was made through presidential Executive Secretary Ruben Torres in a letter to his group Monday.
Business leaders attending a conference that began here yesterday welcomed the news, saying it will boost the peace accord Manila signed with the bigger Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) last month that ended the MNLF's 24-year armed struggle for self-rule.
Defense officials have said that the MILF, which split from the MNLF in 1977, is considered the most formidable remaining threat to peace in the region with 10,000 well-armed fighters.
However, fighting continued for the fourth straight day yesterday in the island of Basilan, where government planes rocketing an MILF mountain lair to prepare for a ground assault, the military said.
Manila's offer involved the signing of an interim truce and the creation of two technical committees, one to discuss ground rules of the cease-fire and the other to tackle the talking points in proposed formal talks, Murad said.
It was made following a series of clashes between the military and the MILF in the southern provinces of Basilan and Cotabato.
Southern Command spokesman Maj. Fredesvindo Covarrubias said about 20 rebels have been killed in the fighting. The government suffered several wounded but no deaths, he said.
"We are still studying the proposal," said Murad, interviewed over Roman Catholic radio station DXMS in Cotabato. He added that the group wanted the "ground rules" on how the cease-fire will be conducted to be set first before any signing.
Meanwhile, some 500 foreign and Filipino business leaders began a three-day business conference in this booming southern city yesterday, saying they are due to agree to invest 42 billion pesos ($1.5 billion) in Mindanao.
Federico Pascual, head of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said the chamber had received commitments that joint venture and other deals would be signed at the end of the annual Philippine Business Conference.
Pascual would not name the companies or the areas where they are investing.
But he said that a substantial amount of the commitments -- aimed at transforming resources-rich Mindanao into an economic dynamo -- would come from the Philippines' Moslem neighbors Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia.
Businessmen said they were encouraged to invest here by the peace agreement, which provided for the creation of a zone of peace and development in 14 southern provinces and nine cities.
President Fidel Ramos this week named MNLF chieftain Nur Misuari as head of a council that will coordinate development projects.
In another development, gunmen kidnapped an 11-year-old boy from a department store in the town of Esperanza near Cotabato on Wednesday, highlighting the threats posed by kidnap and other criminal gangs on potential investors.
Gino Goroy, the son of a petrol dealer, was the 32nd kidnap victim this year in the central Mindanao region, which the authorities admit hosts about a million firearms, half of which are in the hands of rebel groups and crime gangs.
The abduction came a day after suspected Moslem bandits demanded 30 million pesos ($1.15 million) for the release of a couple and their three-year-old son they kidnapped on Tuesday.