RP-Moro autonomy pact agreed by all sides

RP-Moro autonomy pact agreed by all sides

MANILA (AFP): An agreement creating a special transition government for a Moslem autonomous region in the southern Philippines will be signed within three months, a senior official said yesterday.

Executive Secretary Ruben Torres, chief aide of President Fidel Ramos, said that "in the next two or three months, we will probably finish that," referring to details for the transition government whose leadership will be offered to Moro guerrilla leader Nur Misuari.

His statement comes following "full consensus" reached at the end of three-day talks on Sunday between Manila and Misuari's Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in setting up a transitional government to pave the way for the Moslem autonomous region.

The agreement on Sunday was considered a major breakthrough in the three-year-old peace talks between the government and the MNLF aimed at ending nearly a quarter century of bloody conflict in the southern Philippines.

However details of the transition government, particularly Misuari's demand that a 20,000-strong police force composed of MNLF guerrillas be placed under the transitional council, remain unresolved.

Torres admitted that they still did not know how much it would cost to set up this transition government but said money could come from Ramos's contingent fund in the meantime and that congress could appropriate more funds for the agency next year.

"What is important is we get the structure going and we get the major issues resolved," Torres said.

The MNLF launched a separatist war in October 1972. It signed a cease-fire agreement brokered by the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Tripoli, Libya in 1976.

The group has since shifted much of its efforts to the diplomatic front to gain self-rule for the Moslem minority in the south, although up to 15,000 of its fighters have refused to disarm, leading to random clashes with the military and acts of banditry.