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Monday, May 12, 2003
Manila sets stage for breaking off peace talks with Moro rebels (2nd update, 3:11 pm)
By Cecil Morella
MANILA -- President Arroyo on Monday set the stage for completely breaking off peace talks with Moro separatists with a Cabinet proposal to declare the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) a "terrorist" group.
The terror tag would give Manila cover to ask foreign governments to freeze the assets and cut off foreign funding sources of the country's largest Moro secessionist guerrilla group, in keeping with international accords against global terrorism.
The government as a policy does not negotiate with armed groups it considers "terrorist."
"The MILF can no longer hide behind a veil of legitimacy under the growing suspicion that it is involved in the entire web of terrorism, domestically and regionally," Arroyo said in a written statement.
"Time is running out for the MILF to prove its sincerity in the peace process. It must cut the double talk and make a clear statement on whether it is allied with the Abu Sayyaf and foreign terrorist groups such as the Jemaah Islamiyah or the al-Qaeda, or unequivocally reject them."
Arroyo spokesman Ignacio Bunye said "a decision on whether to declare the MILF as a terrorist organization will be discussed" by a Cabinet oversight committee on security later Monday.
An Arroyo envoy, Eduardo Ermita, would brief envoys of Islamic countries here later Monday on the recent violence in the south, Bunye said.
Arroyo earlier suspended peace talks with the MILF and authorized the military to mount punitive actions against the guerrillas amid a wave of Moro rebel raids and bombings that have claimed nearly 100 lives.
On Monday, she made a flying visit to the region to rally residents hit by MILF attacks to stand up to terrorism.
"We bleed for the victims of terrorism but there is a time for rising up again and restoring what has been destroyed," Arroyo told a crowd of 4,000 in Siocon town, ravaged by a May 4 rebel attack that left 22 people dead.
Arroyo was also scheduled to visit the city of Koronadal, whose public market was rocked by a bomb attack on Saturday that claimed as many as 13 lives.
Sixty-three other people have been killed in the south since March in other MILF raids and suspected MILF bombings elsewhere in the region.
The 12,500-strong MILF has been waging a decades-old campaign for an Islamic state in the southern third of the mainly Roman Catholic Philippine islands.
MILF spokesmen have acknowledged stepping up offensives but have denied the group is targeting civilians or that it was behind the bombings.
Officials have accused the MILF of protecting the Abu Sayyaf, a kidnapping group that Manila and Washington have branded as terrorists.
There are also reports that the MILF has worked with Jemaah Islamiyah and al-Qaeda in staging urban bombings in the Philippines or training foreign militants in their camps in the south.
Jemaah Islamiyah has been linked to a series of blasts in Southeast Asia including the Bali bombings last year, while al-Qaeda was behind the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
Last year, Manila diplomatically isolated Filipino communist rebels after the United States declared the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its New People's Army (NPA), as well as the Abu Sayyaf, as "foreign terrorist organizations."
Manila says the leftist rebels' foreign funds dried up after the US and Filipino governments put pressure on western European countries to cut off support by parties and groups sympathetic to the rebels, who now rely on domestic extortion. AFP
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