MNLF wants Misuari in Jeddah meeting

COTABATO CITY — Officials of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) are optimistic that the judiciary will grant their jailed founder Nur Misuari a brief furlough to enable him to attend a tripartite meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia that will assess their Sept. 2, 1996 truce with the government.

The meeting, which will be participated by representatives from the MNLF, Malacañang and the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), was scheduled in November, or after this year’s observance of the Ramadan.

A team from the OIC toured Mindanao from May 18 to 25, to evaluate the implementation of the GRP-MNLF peace pact and initially look into misunderstandings on some of its provisions by both sides.

The OIC, composed of 58 Muslim states, including Arab petroleum-exporting states in the Middle East, helped broker the peace accord between the government and MNLF.

Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema, who is the MNLF’s secretary-general, said the front’s leadership is now formulating an outline of what to present to the OIC and the government during the tripartite meeting.

Sema said there are clamors among MNLF leaders for the government to grant Misuari, governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) from 1996 to 2001, a short furlough so that he can attend the meeting the OIC will host.

"We are very thankful that the Philippine government is responding very positively to the efforts of the OIC and the MNLF to iron out seeming kinks in the implementation of the GRP-MNLF peace accord. Thanks to President Arroyo," Sema said.

Sema said they are certain the tripartite meeting will provide the government and the MNLF an opportunity to discuss, "under the spirit of mutual cooperation and unity," certain disagreements on some provisions of the peace pact.

As members of the MNLF peace panel, Misuari and Sema sat in all of the negotiations that ultimately resulted in the forging of the final peace agreement with the government.

Misuari was elected as third governor of ARMM on Sept. 9, 1996, or a week after he signed the GRP-MNLF truce.

The peace pact paved the way for the integration of some 7,000 qualified MNLF fighters into the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP), and the implementation of various socio-economic projects in impoverished areas where thousands of former guerrillas reside.

Misuari has been detained since 2002 for leading a failed mutiny in Sulu in November 2001, two weeks before the conduct of the fourth regional polls, after the administration’s Lakas-Christian, Muslim Democrats (CMD) anointed physician Parouk Hussin as official bet for governor, instead of the re-electionist Misuari.