Estrada hits government pact with MILF

"Don’t let our soldiers’ sacrifices be in vain."

Jailed former President Joseph Estrada made this appeal to President Arroyo yesterday as he asked her to scrap the new agreement the government forged with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Malaysia last Tuesday.

In a statement, Estrada said he was saddened and dismayed that the government not only agreed to return the military camps of the MILF, which the Armed Forces overran just two years ago, but also promised to give reparations for damaged MILF property.

"In the face of this latest setback in the efforts by our soldiers toward the right path to peace not only in Mindanao but elsewhere in the country, I call on the Arroyo government not to let the sacrifices of our soldiers be in vain," Estrada said.

"I am saddened as it now appears that the sacrifices of our gallant soldiers who bravely offered their lives in order to reclaim for our Republic the territories seized by the MILF, were all for nothing," the former president added.

Hundreds of government troops and MILF rebels were killed or wounded when Estrada ordered full-scale military offensives against the MILF between 1999 and 2000.

Before a ceasefire was reached last year, fighting had displaced tens of thousands of people. Mosques, Muslim schools, houses and infrastructure were either damaged or destroyed during the offensives.

Under the new agreement, the MILF will set up a body to implement government-funded aid projects and allow tens of thousands of people to return to their homes while the government will pay reparations for destroyed or damaged property.

The government also agreed to allow the MILF a measure of control in government-funded rehabilitation and development projects through a development agency to be established by the MILF.

Estrada also described the proposed rehabilitation to be undertaken by the MILF as a "sham" and doubted if the billions of pesos in government funds to be poured into the areas would really be used for rebuilding and not for re-arming.

"Based on experience, there is a big possibility that the expected billions of pesos in ‘reparation pay’ to be given by the Arroyo administration would again be used by the MILF to establish defensive structures as what happened to the irrigation and road projects financed by the Ramos government and which made it very difficult for our soldiers when I ordered them to retake MILF camps and territories," Estrada said.

He recalled that a contingent of Marines were slaughtered by the MILF during the fight for the Narciso Ramos Highway in Maguindanao after MILF fighters hid in irrigation ditches that lined the highway and staged an ambush.

"In my view, peace and development are now more remote in Mindanao," Estrada said, adding that the rebels would be stronger by allowing them back into their former camps.

But Muslim rebels said that while it is true that MILF forces were once stationed in these places, they are actually Muslim communities and not military encampments.

The new agreement builds upon a Malaysian-brokered ceasefire they reached last year in hopes of ending decades of conflict in predominantly Muslim southern Philippines.

The MILF has officially thanked the government for the agreement and said they consider it a major step in the peace process.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar called the document, signed by rebel and government officials, "another positive step forward in the peace process."

The MILF is the largest rebel group fighting for an independent Muslim homeland in the impoverished southern region of the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines.