Palace welcomes MILF’s willingness to talk peace
By Aurea Calica

Malacanang welcomed yesterday the statement of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) that it is ready to resume peace talks with the government.

“We all very well know that the general statement of the MILF is that they welcome the peace process. It’s just the one portion of its press conference was blown out of the proportion and made it appear (it was gearing for war),” presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said in an interview with dzRB.

Lacierda said Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Teresita Deles is aware that the MILF is looking forward to the peace process. He said it was good that the MILF made a clarification because there was no reason to doubt the sincerety of the Aquino government in pushing for peace. “The MILF’s general statement was positive – they were in favor of the peace process. The so-called saber rattling was a media play. That’s the reason why she (Deles) was very, very confident they are willing to go through the peace process,” Lacierda said.

Earlier, Malacanang stressed the sincerity of the administration to pursue peace talks with the MILF amid reports that hundreds of Muslim guerillas underwent combat training and built up their arsenal in case negotiations falter. “Maybe they are just worried that the peace process will not push through. But I guess it is just posturing on their part because in their press conference on the peace process, we get positive information from them that they are also eager to purue the peace process,” Lacierda said.

“So it’s just a matter of time. Let us wait after the end of the Ramadan and we can assure the MILF that we are serious about pursuing the peace process.” MILF negotiator Mohagher Igbal acknowledge his group continued to train fighters and collect weapons. “That’s normal in a revolutionary group. It’s not a sign of bad faith because there have always been two options while the problem remains unresolved: the peace process of war,” he said. Igbal said, however, his group focuses primarily on the “peace track” and would reconstitute its peace panel once the government negotiation team had been set up. Lacierda said the government is in the process of completing the members of its peace panel. He also clarified that the new administration would not start the peace talks from the scratch. “Let me be clear [that] we’re not starting from scratch. We recognize the past agreements; we’re reviewing them; we’re going (through) conducting due diligence on these agreements. So we’d like to tell our MILF brothers that we are not starting from scratch. We will go ahead from what had been agreed upon,” Lacierda said.