The MILF leadership earlier expressed dismay over the government’s renewed retaliation campaign against the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed component, the New People’s Army (NPA).

The source said that it is possible for the Arroyo administration to wage a similar war against the MILF, thereby derailing for long, the stalled peace in the southern Philippine region.

Scuttled

Jimmy Labawa, vice chairperson of the MNLF central committee, said that fighting has raged between his group and the government despite a peace accord signed 10 years ago. As a result, he said that the MNLF is hoping that a high-level tripartite meeting will push through in Jeddah with the government and the influential Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) in revising the 1996 Final Peace Agreement. The conference has been proposed by the OIC itself.

The OIC has reportedly agreed with the MNLF’s view that only the Philippines has benefited from the agreement, rendering MNLF “co-opted” in the first phase of the peace program involving the integration of some 5,750 MNLF members into the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the creation of the Southern Philippine Council for Peace and Development (SPCPD) purpotedly to spur development.

OIC Secretary General Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu revealed four impediments to the full implementation of the 1996 Final Peace Agreement.

In his report to the 33rd session of the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers last June, Ihsanoglu said that the enactment of Republic Act 9054 in 2001 served the government alone by expanding the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) as ancillary administrative unit.

He also noted that the Philippine government “has been implementing unilaterally neither the Tripoli Agreement nor the 1996 Peace Agreement but RA 9054.”

“[RA 9054] has become the greatest impediment and stumbling block towards the implementation of the Agreements,” he said.

Unilateral

Labawan lamented that the MNLF integrees in the AFP were not organized into a separate unit which is supposed to operate under a deputy commander of the Southern Command. As agreed upon, the commander was to come from MNLF.

But AFP asserted more power, even using its dominance to deploy MNLF integrees in combat duties against MILF, and recently, against their fellow MNLF forces, Lagawan said.

Phase II of the accord, involving the establishment of the separate government for the autonomous region, was also stalled with the implementation of RA 9054.

“There were many violations,” Labawan said, mainly on the government’s “provocative actions” forcing the MNLF to take offensives.

In February 2005, the Sulu Massacre involving government forces and which claimed four lives was believed to have renewed skirmishes between the MNLF and the government.

Before the year ended, clashes happened anew in Sulu brought about by the presence of U.S. troops during the Balikatan (shoulder-to-shoulder) joint military exercises. Bulatlat

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