Japan urges PHL, MILF to return to negotiating table

The Japanese government has urged the Philippine government and Muslim rebels to return to the negotiating table. For four years now, Japan has been actively contributing to the peace process in Mindanao through its socio-economic development programs. Tokyo welcomes the policy of the Aquino administration to continue to seek peace with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) through negotiation, said Ambassador Makoto Katsura. He also made assurances that Japan will maintain assistance to impoverished and conflict-torn areas in Mindanao. “(We) look forward to the formal resumption of the peace talks in the near future," Katsura told a diplomatic reception Thursday night. The main protagonists in the decades-long secessionist war have been at loggerheads over the insistence of the Aquino administration to oust current Malaysian facilitator of the talks, Datuk Othman Razak, whom the government peace panel believes is biased in favor of the MILF. Manila wants Malaysia to find a replacement “acceptable to both sides" so that peace talks could resume immediately. IMT development experts Through the years, Japan has proactively contributed to the peace process through the dispatch of development experts to the International Monitoring Team. The IMT has been credited for significantly reducing skirmishes between government troops and MILF fighters. Japan joined the IMT as its first non-Muslim member in October 2006. Since then, two Japanese experts on reconstruction and development have been dispatched to Mindanao as part of the IMT’s socio-economic component. Recently, Japan has extended the stay of its contingent. Currently, the IMT is headed by a 20-strong delegation from Malaysia, 15 from Brunei and three from Libya, forming the security component of the team. Two representatives from Japan monitor the socio-economic development agreement. The European Union and Norway recently joined the IMT but have yet to send representatives to the team. The MILF is the largest group battling for self-rule in Mindanao. A final peace agreement would end the protracted conflict in the country’s second biggest island that has claimed at least 120,000 lives, brought massive destruction to properties, and crippled the region’s economy. – MRT/JV, GMANews.TV