| MILF MAY ACCEPT
OFFER OF AUTONOMY MANILA
-- The Philippines' biggest Muslim rebel group has indicated it may consider a government
offer of autonomy to end a 28-year-old separatist rebellion, a government official said
yesterday.
The apparent breakthrough in
talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) came after
another Islamic rebel group freed a Malaysian hostage among 21 mostly foreign captives
being held in the jungles of southern Jolo island.
Presidential press
undersecretary Mike Toledo said the MILF had sent a government panel a draft of its reply
to the offer of autonomy for Muslim areas in the south of this mainly Roman Catholic
country.
""It would seem that
they are already acceding to the position that any discussion on this will be based on a
meaningful autonomy within the ambit and within the mandate of the Philippine
constitution,'' Mr Toledo told reporters.
He said the government and MILF
would resume talks, which have been going on for three years, today and added:
""Hopefully, an interim agreement is being drafted.''
Government negotiators have
rejected the rebels' demand for an independent Islamic state and instead offered Muslims
autonomy that respects Philippine territorial integrity.
More than 120,000 people have
died in the revolt which began in 1972.
The Moro National Liberation
Front (MNLF), once the Philippines' biggest Muslim rebel group, signed a peace deal in
1996 accepting autonomy for four Muslim-dominated provinces.
The MILF did not take part in
the talks but launched separate negotiations with Manila in 1997. The talks have been
marred by outbreaks of fighting.
Reports that the MILF was
considering autonomy came just before the June 27-29 annual meeting in Malaysia of the
Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC), the world's leading Islamic body. The MILF has
applied for an observer status at the meeting in a bid to gain international recognition.
The Abu Sayyaf, responsible for
the kidnapping of foreign hostages from the resort island of Sipadan, is also fighting for
an independent Muslim homeland but has shunned talks. --Reuters
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