A ranking leader of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) on Tuesday said peace talks with the government could resume either on September 30 or in early October.
Mohagher Iqbal, the head of the MILF panel, explained that Malaysia, the broker or facilitator of the talks, will have a week-long celebration of the Eid’l Fitr that marks the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan that is to end between September 10 and 12, depending on the lunar calendar.
“The decision to meet must come from the two parties with the consensus of the facilitating country,” Iqbal said, referring to Malaysia which has been confirmed by both the government and the MILF as the broker of the negotiations in its capital of Kuala Lumpur.
Malacanang earlier announced the Aquino administration is willing to resume peace talks with the MILF at the end of the Ramadan.
However, Iqbal would not say whether he would still head the MILF panel which has been “temporarily” deactivated pending the resumption of the talks.
In a separate interview, Mohammad Ameen, the chief secretariat of the MILF central committee, disclosed the front leaders will convene after the Ramadan to decide on the reactivation of its peace panel.
Ameen said they now have a short list of prospective members of the MILF panel but declined to comment on whether Iqbal would be retained as the head.
Iqbal, an ethnic Maguindanoan scholar, has been with the panel since the 1990s and has authored more than a dozen of books and studies on the Moro uprising in strife-torn Mindanao, starting with the Spanish colonial occupation of over 300 years.
The MILF deactivated its peace panel after the May 10 automated elections following its meeting with its government counterparts under former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Ameen explained the deactivation was just temporary to give the MILF central leadership enough space to study how its panel fared in the past negotiations and to evaluate the qualifications of prospective members.
On the other hand, President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino has appointed Marvic Leonen, an expert on ancestral domain and the dean of the College of Law of the state-owned University of the Philippines, as the government panel chairman.
Malacanang said three other members have been named, with one more to be appointed to complete the panel before the resumption of the talks.
The government started to talk peace with the MILF in 1997 but these have been marred by major differences which resulted in the breakdown of the negotiations.
The issue came to a boil in 2008 when the Philippine Supreme Court (SC) rejected the draft agreement to establish an expanded Moro homeland in Mindanao under the concept of ancestral domain, which was to be signed in Kuala Lumpur.
In its ruling, the SC declared the draft agreement as illegal and contrary to the provisions of the 1987 Constitution because it meant the establishment of a state within a sovereign state and that the other stakeholders were not consulted on the issue.
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