RP suspects rebels' hand in Ipil
RP suspects rebels' hand in Ipil
MANILA (AFP): The Philippine defense chief yesterday said a Moro rebel group engaged in a truce with the government was losing commanders to fundamentalism, and some of them may have joined the bloody sacking of a town this month.
Defense Secretary Renato de Villa said some field commanders of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) were being drawn to a Moslem rebel group behind the April 4 raid on the southern town of Ipil which left 66 dead.
"We suspect there are active MNLF leaders and members who were involved" in the sacking of Ipil despite an ongoing cease-fire between Manila and the MNLF, he told foreign correspondents.
The MNLF, led by the exiled Nur Misuari, has been conducting peace talks with the Manila government over the past two years after a failed separatist rebellion in the south in the early 1970s.
He added that the raiders, who numbered about 200, came from various outlaw Moslem groups, many of them splinter groups of the MNLF.
They included the Abu Sayyaf, a Moslem fundamentalist terrorist group that has launched several attacks against Christians.
De Villa said the Abu Sayyaf and their new recruits wanted to set up a "fundamentalist Islamic state" in the south, which is dominated by Christians but has a large and disenchanted Moslem minority.
The issue of alleged MNLF participation in the Ipil raid was to be raised by the government panel at a meeting with the group and cease-fire observers yesterday in the southern city of Zamboanga.
Earlier, chief government negotiator Manuel Yan said in a radio interview that the government panel sought the meeting with the MNLF after President Fidel Ramos ordered a review of the peace talks due to military allegations that MNLF commanders had taken part in the Ipil raid.
The Abu Sayyaf and other armed Moslem groups that broke away from the MNLF however, are not covered by the cease-fire, and it opposes the peace talks.
De Villa warned that "if significant numbers of the MNLF" join the Abu Sayyaf, the position of the MNLF and its commander as the "sole recognized representative" of Moslem Filipinos in the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) "will be jeopardized."
He added that this would affect the peace process, which is being overseen by the OIC.
Misuari has denied that any of his forces were involved in the Ipil raid and has promised to punish guerrilla leaders found to have taken part, but the allegations have cast a cloud over the peace talks.
Yan added that if it were proven that the MNLF was involved, it would be up to the joint cease-fire committee, which includes OIC representatives and Indonesian military observers, to decide what to do.