Philippines assures ASEAN ministers peace talks on track

MANILA (AFP) - The Philippines will assure its neighbours next week that peace talks with Islamic militants remain on track despite a looming major offensive, Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo said Thursday.

Romulo said he would brief his fellow foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on the security situation in the southern Mindanao region, where the separatist group the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the military are girding for war.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The bloc's ministers are due in the capital Manila on Monday for annual ministerial talks.

Brunei and Malaysia have both sent troops to Mindanao as part of an international monitoring mission to help investigate the ambush deaths of 14 Filipino Marines at the hands of the MILF early this month.

Ten of them were beheaded, triggering widespread public condemnation and threatening peace talks between the 12,000-strong MILF and the government.

Indonesia, meanwhile, has helped broker peace in Mindanao in the past.

Romulo said he has already spoken with Indonesian Foreign Minister Hassan Wirayuda and assured him that Manila was committed to ending the secessionist movement peacefully.

"We are on track," Romulo said of the peace talks.

"We will update them on the situation," he said of his fellow ASEAN ministers.

Military officials earlier said that more than 2,000 soldiers have been diverted to the southern island of Basilan to prepare for the offensive after the MILF rejected demands that it hand over those involved in the ambush.

The Marines who were killed were searching for a kidnapped Italian priest when they ran into heavy fire from MILF forces allegedly backed by Al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf militants on July 10 in Basilan.

The hostage, Giancarlo Bossi, 57, was freed last week after more than a month in captivity and has said he was never in Basilan during his ordeal.