Peace advocates hopeful on results of Muslim leaders’ summit

COTABATO CITY — Peace advocates are optimistic that last week’s first-ever peace summit in Manila of Muslim leaders from all over Mindanao would prompt politicians and religious leaders in the South to unify, saying their differences have unduly stalled efforts to foster peace and sustainable development.

For local observers, the gathering, held at the Manila Midtown Hotel last April 23-24, provided a much-needed boost to the Mindanao peace process, which is seemingly stymied by lack of cooperation from some sectors, including some influential Muslim clans.

Autonomous Region in Muslim Min—danao Gov. Parouk Hussin, who helped organize the event, said even feuding politicians, some of them locked in bloody clan wars, sat side-by-side in the gathering and discussed the nagging peace and order problems in predominantly Muslim areas.

"There are indications that Muslim leaders in Mindanao would no longer allow themselves to be polarized by different issues, ideologies and political convictions. Our main concern now is cooperation and solidarity," Hussin told The STAR yesterday.

He said some participants also pledged to help revive the stalled peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Hussin, who belongs to the Moro National Liberation Front, which forged a peace pact with the government on Sept. 2, 1996, said organizers have agreed to hold more summits before yearend to thresh out more issues besetting impoverished Muslim communities in the South.

So intense have been the divisions among Southern Mindanao’s Muslim religious and political groups that they hardly could gather in one venue to discuss common peace-building initiatives.

In the ARMM alone, each of the region’s 92 town mayors keeps at least 70 assorted firearms, including M-60 machineguns and shoulder-fired grenade launchers, which they use to protect themselves against rivals and to perpetuate power.

Several resolutions were drafted during the peace summit, mostly urging the intensification of socio-economic interventions in Mindanao’s war-torn communities and solidarity between the island’s indigenous groups and the national government.

Justice Secretary Simeon Datumanong, who hails from Maguindanao, said the two-day event also provided Muslim leaders a venue to express their views on President Arroyo’s socio-economic thrusts in the South.

"Now, Muslim leaders can no longer complain about not having been involved in the government’s peace-building activities in Mindanao because they themselves gathered in one venue to formulate ideas and recommendations on how Mindanao’s Muslim communities and the government can help one another in addressing the security problem," Datumanong said.