MindaNews » OIC to sit as observer in GPH-MILF peace talks.

OIC to sit as observer in GPH-MILF peace talks
By Carolyn O. Arguillas
March 22, 2012

COTABATO CITY (MindaNews/22 March) — The Philippine government (GPH) and Moro Islamic Liberation Front  (MILF)  ended their three-day peace negotiations Wednesday with no significant agreement reached on the substantive issues of power and wealth sharing but agreed to approve the request of the  Office of the Secretary-General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (formerly Conference) to sit as observer in the 15-year old  talks.

The approval of the OIC’s observer status was contained in the Joint Statement signed by GPH panel chair Marvic Leonen and MILF panel chair Mohagher Iqabal with Malaysian facilitator Dato Ab Ghafar Tengku Mohamed.

“Excellent move,” historian Rudy Rodil said of the entry of the OIC. Rodil served as government peace panel member in the negotiations with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) from 1993 to 1996 and in the negotiations with the MILF from 2004 to 2008.

The OIC, he told MindaNews, is the “perfect mediator between the MNLF and MILF.”

Peace advocate Soliman Santos, a regional trial court judge who has written several books on the Bangsamoro peace process, echoed Rodil’s comment. He told MindaNews the entry of the OIC is “good for convergence and international clout. They should be able to help the MNLF-MILF unity process and see also who better represents the Bangsamoro aspirations.”

“A value addition to the talks,”  said Guiamel Alim, of the Council of Elders of the Consortium of Bangsamoro Civil Society.

The 57-member pan-Islamic body brokered the peace negotiations between the Philippine government and the MNLF that led to the signing of the 1976 Tripoli Agreement and the 1996 Final Peace Agreement (FPA).

The MNLF has been holding an observer status in the OIC since 1977 and has been sending delegations to OIC meetings in the last 35 years. The MILF is composed of members of the MNLF who broke away from the MNLF in the late 1970s to form what it initially called  the “New MNLF” but which it later renamed to MILF. The leader of the breakaway group was Salamat Hashim, vice chair to chair Nur Misuari.

Hashim succumbed to an illness in July 2003. Misuari was elected governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao  (ARMM) a week after he signed the 1996 FPA. He was detained on charges of rebellion from January 2002 to April 2008.

The  OIC initially created a Committee of Four that later expanded into the Ministerial Committee of  the Six led by Indonesia to facilitate the talks until the signing of the FPA in 1996.  In late June 2000, just as the military was about to attack  the MILF’s main stronghold, Camp Abubakar, in the “all-out war “ waged by then President Joseph Estrada, the OIC’s International Conference of  Foreign Ministers (ICFM)  held in Malaysia, added two more country-members – Malaysia and Brunei – to make it into the Committee of the Eight , to look into the implementation of the 1996 FPA.

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