Hostilities feared to affect MILF peace talks

COTABATO CITY — The government’s coordinating committee on the cessation of hostilities is apprehensive that the worsening situation in Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao, where Moro rebels and pro-government militiamen are fighting, could affect the peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Retired Brig Gen. Ramon Santos, the committee’s chairman, said the government, through the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, is initiating a "high-level effort" to address the breakdown of peace and order in several barangays at the boundary of the Maguindanao towns of Shariff Aguak, Mamasapano and Datu Unsay.

More than a thousand militiamen and civilian volunteers have been battling radical MILF forces in the three towns for the past six days.

The hostilities were reportedly triggered by the June 23 roadside bombing in Shariff Aguak, which left seven people dead and caused injuries to more than a dozen others, some of them children.

Senior Superintendent Lomala Gunting, Maguindanao police director, said the hostilities began when the rebels opened fire on policemen sent to serve arrest warrants for MILF commanders Said Pakiladatu and Amiril Kato Ombra, both tagged in the bombing.

"These hostilities have a big impact on the government-MILF talks. This security problem can even possibly delay again the supposedly continuing peace talks," Santos told Catholic radio station dxMS in Cotabato City.

Santos said Presidential Adviser on the Peace Jesus Dureza is now focused on extending humanitarian services to thousands of villagers displaced by the conflict.

Santos said the ceasefire committees of both the government and the MILF, with the help of the Malaysian-led international monitoring team, are now formulating measures on how the anti-crime mechanisms of the ceasefire agreement can be carried out to help the police and the military solve the June 23 bombing, which nearly killed Maguindanao Gov. Datu Andal Ampatuan.

"Gov. Ampatuan himself assured us in the government ceasefire committee that he also wants the problem resolved because it is his people who are suffering most from the conflict now raging in several barangays in Maguindanao," he said.

Santos, however, said the provincial government wants the MILF to immediately turn over Pakiladatu and Ombra.

"Everything is being done now to address the problem," he said.