Malaysia still 3rd party facilitator in GRP-MILF talks

(Updated 3:27 p.m.) Malaysia will remain the third party facilitator when the government resumes its peace negotiations with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a senior Malacañang official said Tuesday. "What we have been informed is Malaysia is still the third party negotiator," said presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda at a press briefing. Malaysia was the third party facilitator in the government-MILF negotiations during the Arroyo administration. President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III said in an ambush interview that the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) informed him that the government and the MILF is at "an advanced stage of negotiations that changing the third party at this point might delay the whole process." The government panel, which will be headed by University of the Philippines College of Law dean Marvic Leonen, is set to resume negotiations with the MILF after the Ramadan. (See: MILF: Peace talks likely to resume by end-Sept) The government and the MILF began peace talks in 1997. The Arroyo administration’s peace efforts with the MILF, however, were jeopardized in late 2008 when the Supreme Court barred the signing -- and eventually ruled as unconstitutional -- of a memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain between the government and the MILF expanding the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. The junking of the MOA-AD triggered violent acts from some MILF rebel commanders. Subsequent discussions between the government and the Moro secessionists, however, resulted in an agreement to continue talks under the next administration. — RSJ, GMANews.TV