Friday, January 11, 2008 MILF ready to go to war if provoked By Ben O. Tesiorna
THE Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) will not back out from a war if the government starts hitting them.
This was the reaction made by MILF military spokesman Eid Kabalu to the warning made by Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno that the government just might go to war if the MILF stops negotiating with them.
In a text message, Kabalu however asserted that war will be their "last option."
"But we are open to all possibilities. We have the right to defend ourselves in our homeland," Kabalu said.
In a report by www.Luwaran.com posted Thursday, it quoted Puno as saying that "if the MILF continues to defy Constitutional means in forging a peace pact with them, then the negotiation should just be stopped."
"If the MILF doesn't want our agreement, if they do not want to respect our Constitution, then let us stop negotiating and just continue with the war," the report quoted Puno as telling Palace reporters.
The 15th exploratory talks between the government and MILF did not push through in mid-December last year after the MILF found out that the government introduced new points in the draft memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain, different from consensus points since April 2005.
MILF Central Committee Secretariat chair Muhammad Ameen said the MILF cannot take part in the Constitutional processes that the government is taking because it is a revolutionary organization.
But Puno said the government has been "upfront with the MILF" as far as the Constitutional process is concerned.
Government chief peace negotiator Secretary Jesus Dureza meanwhile revealed that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will be asking Congress to amend the Constitution to allow the creation of a Muslim federal region in Mindanao.
Dureza hopes that this step would finally break the impasse in the GRP-MILF talks.
He said the Arroyo administration was hopeful that if the electorate were convinced a federal setup would solve the Muslim insurgency then the Muslim federal region will be granted.
Dureza said the government had yet to decide whether to ask the Senate and the House of Representatives to convene a constituent assembly to amend the Constitution, or to call on Filipinos to elect delegates to a constitutional convention. (BOT)
