Malaysia-led ceasefire monitors to return to southern Philippines

Manila - A Malaysia-led team of international ceasefire monitors are to return to the troubled southern Philippines within a few months, a Philippine official said Thursday. The 60-strong International Monitoring Team pulled out of the southern region of Mindanao in 2008 because of lack of progress in peace talks between the Philippine government and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Philippine Foreign Undersecretary Rafael Seguis, who is also the government's chief peace negotiator with the MILF, said Malaysia has agreed to resume its role as head of the team.

Malaysia is also brokering the peace talks between the Philippines and the MILF.

Seguis said the monitoring team - which also includes Japan, Brunei and Libya - would have a one-year renewable mandate.

Diplomatic sources said the full team was expected to be on the ground by April.

Seguis said the European Union, Norway, Indonesia and Qatar have been invited to become new members of the team but have not yet responded to the invitation.

On December 9, the Philippine government and the MILF resumed formal peace talks in Kuala Lumpur and agreed to reconstitute the monitoring team, which has been credited with reducing fighting between government forces and the MILF since it was first deployed in 2004.

Peace talks between the Philippines and the MILF were suspended in August 2008 when guerrillas seized villages and attacked towns to protest the quashing of a key territorial agreement.

More than 300 people were killed in the attacks and subsequent clashes between the two sides while more than 500,000 fled their homes.

The 12,000-strong MILF is the largest Muslim rebel group fighting for an independent Islamic state in the southern Philippines. It entered into peace talks with the government in 1997.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/304988,malaysia-led-ceasefire-monitors-to-return-to-southern-philippines.html.