MILF ready to resume peace negotiations

SULTAN KUDARAT, Maguindanao — The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is now ready to resume peace talks with the government after the month-long observance by Muslims of the Ramadan, which ends today.

Lawyer Lanang Ali, a member of the MILF’s negotiating panel, said they can now schedule the next round of formal talks with their government counterparts.

Both panels last met in August in Malaysia.

"It was due to our observance of the Ramadan that we asked for the deferment of any formal negotiations outside of the country during the period," Ali said.

Peace talks with the MILF first started on Jan. 7, 1997, but since then, had repeatedly been marred by hostilities in many areas supposedly covered by a ceasefire.

Presidential Assistant for Mindanao Jesus Dureza, chairman of the government’s peace panel, said it will not be difficult for both sides to agree on the date and venue of the next round of talks.

"Our lines of communication have always been open. We can even do it just by calling each other through telephone and even just by text messages," he said.

Dureza said there was not even a lull in back-channel dialogues between the two panels during the Ramadan.

Ramadan, for Muslims, is a holy month — lasting for one lunar cycle, or 30 days — when they abstain from food and drinks during the day.

Dureza said the government and MILF panels even initiated during the Ramadan a joint assessment of the impact to the ongoing peace talks of the recent hostilities in Sulu and Zamboanga City which followers of renegade Muslim leader Nur Misuari allegedly instigated.

"The effort was just part of the common initiative of the two panels to discuss solutions to nagging security problems in areas covered by the ceasefire," Dureza said.

Among the contentious issues which the two panels tackled in previous negotiations abroad were the ancestral domain of the Bangsamoro people, or Mindanao’s indigenous Muslim groups, the continuing rehabilitation of displaced people from former MILF enclaves now under government control; and the demarcation of areas where state and rebel forces are scattered.