RP's Moro separatists declare cease-fire

RP's Moro separatists declare cease-fire

MANILA (Agencies): The Philippines' biggest rebel group
ordered its forces on Sunday to halt all attacks against
government troops ahead of the resumption of stalled peace talks
with Manila.

The rebel cease-fire is to take effect at 1 a.m. on Tuesday
(Midnight Monday Jakarta time) and will match a similar move by
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who in February ordered a
unilateral military ceasefire to try to revive the peace
negotiations.

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), in a directive to
all guerrilla commanders on the southern island of Mindanao, said
it was issuing the ceasefire order in line with an agreement with
Manila last week to resume talks within three months.

"You are hereby directed to suspend all your offensive
military actions in your areas of operation and concentrate only
in strengthening your defense position, effective 0100 hours of
April 3," MILF vice-chairman for military affairs Al Haj Murad
said in his order to guerrilla forces.

"This is in line with our efforts to normalize the situation
and pave the way for the resumption of the stalled peace talks
between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines and the
MILF," Murad said.

No date has been set for the resumption of the negotiations
aimed at ending a 29-year-old separatist rebellion in the south
of the mainly Roman Catholic country.

The MILF made its announcement only hours after government
forces and guerrillas clashed in Maguindanao province, with both
sides suffering undetermined casualties.

Kabalu said the fighting broke out after soldiers entered a
rebel-controlled area.

More than 120,000 people have died in the separatist war. The
MILF, with a force estimated by the military at over 12,000, is
the biggest group fighting for an Islamic state in the southern
Philippines.

Manila has shunned talks with the fundamentalist Abu Sayyaf
force, a smaller faction, which it has denounced as bandits.
Abu Sayyaf burst onto the international stage last year when it
kidnapped more than 40 foreigners and Filipinos from neighboring
Malaysian islands and from the southern Philippine island of
Jolo.

All of the hostages have been freed -- most of them after
payment of huge ransoms -- except for an American national and a
Filipino who remain in the Abu Sayyaf's hands.

President Arroyo has also agreed to resume peace talks on
April 27 with the communist-led National Democratic Front, which
has been fighting for a Marxist state for more than three
decades.

More than 40,000 people have died in the Marxist rebellion
since it began in 1969.

Talks between Manila and the separatists collapsed last August
after the military, on the orders of then-president Joseph
Estrada, attacked and seized dozens of rebel camps on Mindanao.

Arroyo reversed Estrada's strong-arm policy when she took over
the presidency after the former movie actor was ousted in a
"people power" revolt in January.

Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes said that the Philippine
military will withdraw some 2,000 troops deployed in the former
headquarters of the country's largest Muslim separatist group to
pave the way for the rehabilitation of the communities there.

Reyes said the military has no intention permanently to
station soldiers in Camp Abubakar, which spans 10,000 hectares
and covers at least three towns in the province of Maguindanao,
960 kilometers south of Manila.

"We have 2,000 troops in Abubakar and we don't want them to
say there long," he said. "They cannot stay there indefinitely.
Once the areas are developed, we can recall our soldiers there."

Reyes said the troops could be re-assigned in other areas in
the country or they can "go back to barracks when there is peace
already".

Abubakar and 45 other MILF camps were seized by the military
last year during a major offensive against the rebel group, which
has been fighting for a separate Islamic state in the southern
region of Mindanao since 1978.