RP govt and MILF resume peace talks

RP govt and MILF resume peace talks

MANILA (Reuter): Philippine government negotiators and hard-line Islamic guerrillas resumed peace talks yesterday aimed at nailing down an elusive peace on southern Mindanao island, as their forces battled in nearby hills.

At least 30 Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels and two soldiers have died in fighting in the past week in the island's Zamboanga del Norte province, and an army commander said his troops were pressing their attack on the rebels' mountain lair.

"The offensive will go on until we clear the area," Col. Glicerio Sua told reporters, referring to an MILF camp in the mountain town of Sirawai, which government forces have been shelling since Saturday.

As the army advanced, exploratory talks between government negotiators and an MILF panel resumed about 200 km to the east in Cotabato city.

Heading into the talks, MILF chief negotiator Ghazali Jaafar said the continuing military operations cast doubt on the government's sincerity in the peace talks.

"Our talks on how to forge a cease-fire are still stagnating. Some people say it is an illusion.

"To make things worse, these soldiers engage our forces in gun battles and later go to the media to accuse us of provocation," Jaafar told reporters before the start of the closed-door talks.

The MILF, with a fighting force estimated by the military at between 6,000 and 8,000, is the larger of two rebel splinter groups still waging a guerrilla war despite a peace accord signed in September between Manila and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), largest of the island's Moslem guerrilla groups.

President Fidel Ramos is seeking a separate deal with the MILF, which continues to fight for an Islamic state in a region regarded by the country's five million Moslems as their ancestral homeland.

The Philippines is predominantly Catholic.

Eight months after Ramos and MNLF chief Nur Misuari embraced each other at the signing of the peace accord in Manila, hopes among Moslems and Christians that peace and economic development would come to the war-ravaged area appear to have been premature.

Fighting with breakaway rebel groups continues, kidnap-for- ransom gangs terrorize Mindanao cities and infrastructure remains a mess, businesspeople said.

"Peace has remained very elusive," Wilfredo San Luis, vice president of the Zamboanga chamber of commerce, told Reuters.

"We are very cautions in all aspects. Many people are still reluctant to invest ... Businessmen are afraid of getting kidnapped or receiving extortion letters," he said.

President Ramos, who has promised a US$2.1 billion development program for poor areas in Mindanao, ordered a fast-tracking of projects after meeting MNLF leaders in Manila yesterday.

Presidential executive secretary Ruben Torres blamed bureaucratic red tape for project delays.

A Moslem professor at the University of the Philippines said the peace deal with Misuari produced high expectations among Moslems "but despite government promises, they see nothing".