DAVAO CITY, Philippines—Chief government negotiator Marvic Leonen urged the Moro Islamic Liberation Front Wednesday to return to the negotiating table and resolve differences between the two sides’ proposals on how to end years of conflict and bloodshed in Mindanao.
Leonen told reporters here that unless the MILF agreed to sit down and talk anew, peace would not be achieved any time soon.
“We prefer to sit again at the negotiating table,” he said.
Earlier, MILF chief negotiator Mohagher Iqbal said the MILF has rejected the government’s proposal as it offered only a form of enhanced autonomy whereas they were demanding a “sub-state” or federated state that would require amending the Philippine Constitution.
He said the government draft agreement presented during the August exploratory talks in Kuala Lumpur disregarded all previous agreements worked out by the government and the MILF in the last 14 years of talks.
But Leonen said his panel was at a loss as to what specific agreements were violated and this was precisely why the two panels should meet and sort things out.
He said his panel wanted to go back to the negotiating table so it could understand the MILF position, and to find out what in the government proposal “violated previous agreements… because we believe that it did not.”
Iqbal had made it clear that the MILF would go back to the negotiations only if the official Malaysian mediator and the International Contact Group (ICG) had intervened to break the deadlock.
“When there are differences, that’s the reason for us to go back, not move away from, the negotiating table,” Leonen said. “We needed to sit down and iron the differences together. We could not last forever negotiating through facilitators shuttling to and from Manila and Darapanan (in Malaysia); it will take a long time.”
Meanwhile, the impasse in the peace talks has prompted civic organizations to help find common ground to bring the government and MILF back to the talks.
Around 150 peace advocates from all over the country were to converge here starting Thursday to find “ways that could be helpful in narrowing the gap between the respective proposals for political settlement of government and the MILF.”
Called the National Solidarity Conference on Mindanao, the gathering is being convened by the Bishops-Ulama Conference, Mindanao Solidarity Network, Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches, International Alert, Consortium of Bangsamoro Civil Society and the Mindanao Peoples Caucus.