Peace unlikely in 6 months - MILF leader

COTABATO CITY - A political settlement between the government and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is unlikely to be achieved in six months, a senior rebel official said yesterday as peace talks continued in Maguindanao.

The two sides resumed negotiations on Monday amid separate armed actions launched by the MILF and its estranged former partner, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which signed a peace settlement with the government in 1996.

"We are solving here a decades-old problem. I don't think we can make it in six months," MILF vice chairman Ghadzali Jaafar said in a radio interview.

President Estrada gave government negotiators last week until June to try to solve the 21-year rebellion by the 15,000-member MILF, which wants to set up a separate Islamic state in Mindanao.

Technical committees of both sides wrapped up its second day of meeting yesterday to prepare the agenda for the formal phase of the talks which are to begin today at the Maguindanao provincial capitol, Jaafar said.

As the two committees met on Monday, MILF rebels harassed the village of Malapag near the town of Carmen in North Cotabato, said Maj. Gen. Gregorio Camiling, commander of the Army's 6th Infantry Division.

No one was hurt as the rebels fired at civilians harvesting their crops, he said. Responding soldiers and militiamen engaged them in a 45-minute firefight.

Initial reports from the Army's 602 Infantry Brigade said the MILF rebels possibly wanted to intimidate the villagers into shelling out "protection money."

Prior to the Malapag incident, Camiling said MILF rebels pounded an Army detachment in Barangay Ned, Lake Sebu with rockets and M-79 shoulder-fired grenades.

Two MG-520 gunships pounded the advancing rebels with rockets to prevent them from closing in.

Jaafar said these incidents will not affect the peace talks and will just be investigated by the joint coordinating committee on cessation of hostilities.

Meanwhile, Defense Under-secretary Orlando Soriano, the government's chief negotiator, said the government could never give in to the MILF's demand for immunity guarantee.

"There is no way that the government can allow it," he said.

But Jaafar said the guarantee will apply to both sides, which means that the MILF will also not arrest, detain or harass any member of the government panel during the talks.

But Soriano said there is no need for such. "We have issued them identification cards since the start of the preliminary talks in 1997. Those IDs are enough for them not to be arrested or detained," he said.

Immunity guarantee, he added, applied only to National Democratic Front negotiators who were mostly facing criminal cases. - With Roel Pareño and AFP