August 10, 2007 | 12:00am
COTABATO CITY – Jailed Moro National Liberation Front chairman Nur Misuari has asked the Organization of Islamic Conference not to shift to Indonesia, instead of Jeddah Saudi Arabia, the venue of the forthcoming Tripartite dialogue on perceived kinks in the Sept. 2, 1996 government-MNLF peace agreement.
Sources close to Misuari, among them members of his cabinet when he was still governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said he is not amenable to a proposal by the Indonesian government to hold the tripartite meeting in Jakarta. Representatives of Malacañang, the MNLF and the OIC, a group of 58 Muslim countries, including Arab petroleum-exporting states, are to discuss “misunderstandings” on the peace accord during the tripartite meeting, postponed five times since June last year.
The meeting was supposed to be held last month, but Indonesia’s foreign minister, Hassan Wirajuda, who was among those that helped craft the GRP-MNLF truce, asked for its postponement to a later date before the month’s end.
The Indonesian government also volunteered to host the tripartite meeting, which may be held before next month’s start of Ramadhan.
“Chairman Misuari already relayed to the OIC’s secretary-general his concerns and we are just waiting for the OIC’s official response to the MNLF’s request to hold the tripartite meeting in Jeddah, as originally planned,” said a ranking ARMM official. Misuari, in an e-mail to different media outlets in Mindanao, said he has told the OIC’s secretary general, Ekmeleddin Ihsanuglo, to hold the tripartite meeting right in Ishanuglo’s office in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. – John Unson
