Claims of MILF’s ‘Pentagon links’ may affect talks

COTABATO CITY — Mounting insinuations by some sectors that the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has links with the Pentagon kidnap-for-ransom syndicate could imperil the cordiality of the ongoing peace talks, the front’s central committee said.

MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said their fighters clashed with soldiers at the Tamontaka district here and in Midsayap, North Cotabato last Friday after anti-kidnapping operatives encroached into rebel territories without prior coordination.

"The MILF is always blamed whenever there are kidnappings. It is always the whipping boy," Kabalu said.

Elements of the 40th Infantry Battalion, a unit of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, clashed briefly with Pentagon members in Barangay Macasendeg, Midsayap town.

The soldiers were tipped off about the presence of the Pentagon members who were reportedly planning to install a radio antenna in the area.

Kabalu admitted that the gunmen were MILF fighters, but emphasized they were deployed in the area to help the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) locate kidnapped Cotabato City doctor Rosemarie Agustin.

Agustin was snatched here last Jan. 15 by five Pentagon members, who brought her, on a rivercraft, to a marsh at the city’s boundary with Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao.

Kabalu said the MILF guerrillas in Macasendeg, a farming village in Midsayap, fled immediately to prevent hostilities with the advancing soldiers.

"Our men were really bent on neutralizing them if they did not run away," said Maj. Julieto Ando, spokesman of the 6th Infantry Division.

Ando said the incident was followed by a 25-minute clash between suspected Pentagon members and patrolling combatants of the 6th ID’s anti-kidnapping Task Force Sagittarius at the Tamontaka district here.

But Kabalu said the men who clashed with the task force were MILF rebels. "They did not engage the military extensively to avoid problems," he said.

Under previous agreements, Kabalu said the government and the MILF should observe "tact and prudence" in issuing statements that can only complicate the peace talks and cause animosity between the two sides.