GMA urges rebel groups to seize the moment and talk peace

President Arroyo told Muslim and communist rebels yesterday to get serious about negotiating peace or risk being sidelined into irrelevance.

Mrs. Arroyo’s comments came after the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rejected last Monday her demand that its leader Hashim Salamat sit as the secessionist group’s chief negotiator in proposed peace talks sponsored by neighboring Malaysia.

The MILF and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) "must shed off (their) temporizing gestures and take a bold step forward or suffer a continuing slide into irrelevance or obsolescence," she said.

"The use of force to gain political ends is passé in the civilized world. The path of democracy and social participation has become the only acceptable model of change and transformation," Mrs. Arroyo said yesterday in a speech during a visit to Agusan del Sur, the final leg of her week-long Mindanao sortie.

"This option is open to all rebel groups in our country. They must seize the moment or lose it forever," she said.

Malaysia, Indonesia and other neighbors are leery of Muslim separatism in the Philippines as they battle the threat of Jemaah Islamiyah, a militant Islamic movement waging a violent campaign to set up a pan-Islamic caliphate in Southeast Asia.

"The MILF is being left behind by the inexorable march of peace. It can no longer dilly dally in the face of mounting clamor of the people and the world Islamic community for peace," Mrs. Arroyo said.

The President wrapped up yesterday her week-long Mindanao sortie that took her to 12 cities, including some areas that had been the scene of fighting between rebels and government troops, to highlight the launch of her administration’s P5.5-billion development program for Mindanao, dubbed "Mindanao National Initiative," or Mindanao Natin.

Mrs. Arroyo wanted the government to negotiate directly with Salamat, saying their negotiators had no clout within the MILF.

She has rejected a unilateral truce by the MILF, which it has since extended for another 10 days to June 21.

She has vowed to keep up a military offensive in the south to root out what she described as "terrorist cells" being harbored by the rebels, which Mrs. Arroyo held responsible for recent attacks on civilians in Mindanao.

Last May, the government withdrew from informal peace negotiations with the MILF and threatened to brand them as a terrorist organization following an MILF raid on the Zamboanga del Norte town of Siocon.

Mrs. Arroyo agreed to study the resumption of peace talks following a meeting in Tokyo, Japan with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad in early June.

Malaysia has brokered previous negotiations between Manila and the MILF. Kuala Lumpur said last week it was ready to host new talks to end the rebellion.

The 12,500-member MILF has been waging since the mid-1980s a campaign to set up an Islamic state in Mindanao.

On the other hand, the CPP has been fighting a campaign for 34 years through its armed wing, the New People’s Army.

Communist leaders refused to resume talks unless the United States and the European Union strike the CPP and the NPA off their list of terrorist organizations.

Mrs. Arroyo ordered an indefinite suspension of the negotiations in mid-2001 when the rebels assassinated congressmen Rodolfo Aguinaldo of Cagayan and Marcial Punzalan of Quezon. — With AFP