MILF on claims of US support: It’s good news but not true

A political officer of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) on Thursday said the United States supported peace initiatives between the MILF and the Philippines but denied claims that the Americans supported rebel demands for the creation of a “substate.”

In an interview on Radyo Inquirer, Ghadzali Jaafar, vice chairman for political affairs of the MILF’s central committee, confirmed that the MILF had conducted several meetings with US Embassy representatives in Manila.

The meetings “were not kept secret from the government,” Jaafar said in Filipino.

But Jaafar denied that the United States supported the MILF’s quest for a “substate” in Mindanao. “It’s good news, but not true,” he said.

Jaafar referred to claims by former Bayan Muna Representative Satur Ocampo that purported documents released by the antisecrecy website WikiLeaks showed that the Americans had a direct hand in negotiations that led to a secret deal allowing the MILF to create a Moro homeland in Mindanao.

The memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain, whose signing in Kuala Lumpur in 2008 was witnessed by then US Ambassador to the Philippines Kristie Kenney, was later scrapped as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.

Jaafar said that a 1976 agreement between the Philippine government and the Moro National Liberation Front calling for autonomy in 13 provinces and nine cities was never implemented.

“We don’t want that to happen to us,” Jaafar said, justifying MILF approaches to the US Embassy.

US Ambassador to the Philippines Harry Thomas, who was visiting Pagadian City in Zamboanga del Sur province, declined to comment on the WikiLeaks papers, following Washington’s position not to talk about the substance or accuracy of the supposedly pilfered US cables.

“We do not comment on WikiLeaks in any frame or manner,” Thomas said.

In Davao City, two MILF sources said that a Malaysian facilitator for the talks, Tengku Dato Ab Ghafar Tengku Mohamed, was expected in the Philippines soon. The sources declined to be identified for lack of authority to talk to media.

Also on Thursday, an official of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) warned the government not to tinker with the Constitution to accommodate the MILF’s demand for a substate.

“The peace negotiations should be within the framework of the Constitution. The talks should not stray from the Constitution,” said Manila Auxiliary Bishop Roderick Pabillo, head of the CBCP-National Secretariat for Social Action, Justice and Peace.—With reports from Jerome Aning in Manila and Ryan Rosauro and Julie Alipala, Inquirer Mindanao