Author:
Publication: Agence
France-Presse
Date: August 13, 2000
Manila, Philippines -
Muslim guerrillas have suspended peace talks with the Philippine government
after Manila placed a bounty on their leaders' heads and seized all their
training bases, a spokesman for the country's largest separatist group
said Monday. "Under these circumstances and for (having been) pushed
back to the wall, the MILF central committee has no other recourse but
to suspend the talks indefinitely," Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF)
spokesman Eid Kabalu said over radio station DZMM. The 15,000-member
MILF is waging a 22-year separatist guerrilla campaign in Mindanao island,
an area comprising the southern third of the largely Roman Catholic Philippine
archipelago.
Government forces seized
more than three dozen MILF cantonments in Mindanao between March and July,
including the MILF headquarters of Camp Abubakar. Defence Secretary
Orlando Mercado said over television Monday that the government had kept
the door to peace open as those MILF officials engaged in the peace negotiations
were given immunity guarantees.
But rebel leaders with
bounties on their heads, including MILF chairman Hashim Salamat, had to
answer for their alleged criminal actions, Mercado said. Salamat,
who has called for a "jihad" or holy war against the government, and several
other key MILF leaders had been charged in absentia with several deadly
bombings.
A series of massacres
that left more than 50 people dead in Mindanao over the past month had
also been blamed on the MILF.
Interior Secretary Alfredo
Lim last week offered a nine million-peso ($200,000) prize on the head
of Salamat, Kabalu and MILF military commander Mohamad Murad. The
chief government negotiator with the MILF, Edgardo Batenga said Monday
he will continue to convince the rebels to return to the negotiating table.
But, in an interview
over DZMM he admitted: "The situation on the ground is becoming more complex.
There are now more obstacles to the peace talks. There are now more
variables that we have to contend with."
