Gov’t, MILF to resume ‘low-level’ talks

SULTAN KUDARAT, Shariff Kabunsuan — Government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) peace brokers have begun "conferring informally" through low-level dialogues, on the resumption of the stalled peace talks, highly placed MILF sources said.

Members of the two panels met in Kuala Lumpur on Friday to discuss sensitive issues regarding the impasse in the formal talks.

"But the meeting in Kuala Lumpur was more of brainstorming session and strictly not a formal negotiation. It was sort of getting together to discuss how both sides can bilaterally break the impasse on the peace talks," a source told The STAR on condition of anonymity.

The MILF’s news website, www.luwaran.com, confirmed the "low-level dialogue" between the GRP and MILF panels in Kuala Lumpur last Friday.

There has been tension between the two panels, since the formal talks in Malaysia on Sept. 6 to 7, where both sides failed to reach agreement on the territorial context of the ancestral domain discussion in the peace talks.

The MILF wants to group the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and about a thousand other parcels of land outside the area of autonomy into a Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) without a plebiscite.