UK envoy: Signed PHL-MILF deal can't bring instant peace

Peace in Mindanao will not come at once even if a final peace agreement between the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front Muslim will be reached soon, Britain’s top diplomat to Manila has said. “A signed peace agreement won’t necessarily bring peace straight away," British Ambassador Stephen Lillie said Wednesday on his blog, adding that a peace pact would always be threatened by dissident factions and splinter groups within the MILF. The MILF is negotiating peace with the Government of the Philippines (GPH) for years. To recall, the group broke away from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MNLF) after the latter had begun the peace process with the government. “In many ways, the agreement is the end of one chapter in the peace process and the start of another," Lillie said. The 11,000-strong MILF, which has already dropped its secessionist bid, has been battling government troops in the southern Philippines since 1977. But again, a new rebel faction led by MILF renegade commander Ameril Umbra Kato has set concerns about the future of the years-long negotiations between the PGH and the MILF. Months ago, Kato has formed his own group and took 1,000 fighters under his wing. The MILF stopped short of expelling Kato and told Philippine officials, during the peace talks in Kuala Lumpur, that the “issue is not a simple matter of declaring him ‘lost command.’" The MILF even said Kato's group “would create a much bigger problem." Media spotlight Lillie also expressed concern that the GPH-MILF peace talks “are conducted very much in the full glare of the media spotlight." “There’s more than one reason why I don’t think that’s always a good thing," he said. He said doing so “tends to raise expectations of what each round of talks will achieve – and increases disappointment and disillusion when those expectations are not met." “Sometimes, the fact that the talks simply took place and the parties agreed to come back again is enough," Lillie said. For the talks to succeed and move forward, both sides will need to “take some new approaches in order to seal the deal." President Benigno Aquino III and MILF chairman Al Haj Murad have pledged to accelerate the ongoing negotiations to conclude a final peace agreement in a surprise meeting in Japan in August. But at the following round of talks in Kuala Lumpur, those negotiations almost bogged down as the two sides’ respective versions of the peace accord were poles apart. Lillie encouraged “many and more intensive private talks, in different formations and locations, to hammer out these different areas one by one until there’s sufficient basis for a full agreement." “As in any negotiation, there will have to be trade-offs and concessions, by both parties," he said. A major player in the Mindanao peace process, the U.K. is a member of the International Contact Group (ICG), a group of countries and foreign non-government organizations acting as an advisory body and guarantors to the peace process. Apart from the U.K., its other members are Turkey, Japan, Saudi Arabia, non-state members like the Washington-based Asia Foundation , Center for Humanitarian Dialogue of Geneva, Muhammadiyah of Jakarta, and Conciliation Resources of London. Western nations have urged for a final settlement in the decades-old conflict in Mindanao to usher in more investments in the region’s ailing economy, transform it as a tourism hub and provide jobs. — LBG, GMA News