On the Stalled MILF-GRP Peace Talks (tags)
The Alliance for Just and lasting Peace in the Philippines (AJLPP) through its National Coordinator Mario Santos expressed dismay over the break-off of peace talks between the Moro Islamic Front (MILF) and the Government of the Philippines (GRP ) last December 16,2007. The AJLPP’s Santos saidthat the news is bad for the cause of peace, learned through media sources that the scheduled exploratory talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Saturday did not push through after the MILF backed out of the meeting due to a dispute over a draft agreement on territorial boundaries. The MILF rejected the inclusion by government negotiators of the phrase “constitutional process” in the proposed draft Memorandum of Agreement on ancestral domain as the mode for implementation of the agreement.
MILF denies agreeing to plebiscite (tags)
A senior leader of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has denied having said the Front agreed to holding of a plebiscite in new areas to be added to the present territory of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM). Ghazali Jaafar, MILF deputy chairman for political affairs, was reacting to a news article published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI) today, bylined by Jeffrey Maitum and Charlie Seòase, quoting him as saying, “We are for the constitutional process, if that’s what they (meaning, the government) want…."