COMMUNIST rebels have rejected a 22-day truce that the government declared unilaterally and dismissed an offer for a three-year ceasefire as “gibberish.”
On Sunday, the first day of the truce, at least 20 communist guerrillas killed three unarmed Marines who were on their way to market in San Vicente town in Palawan province.
“If that is the response… then so be it,” Armed Forces Chief Hermogenes Esperon Jr. said “We’ll go after them.”
Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said the rebels who staged the ambush would be “dealt with accordingly.”
In a statement, Communist Party of the Philippines spokesman Gregorio Rosal said Esperon’s proposal of a three-year ceasefire was “totally ridiculous and downright dubious.”
“Who in his right mind would believe General Esperon when all along he has been saber-rattling and prating that the AFP can decimate the revolutionary Armed Forces by 2009? He is the least credible person to make the slightest gesture toward peace,” Rosal said.
Esperon said the truce would not be revoked but vowed to go after the Marines’ killers.
As the communists rejected the government’s peace overtures, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front warned that was prepared to go to war if the government failed to solve a dispute over its future homeland.
In a statement after the group walked out of talks in Kuala Lumpur, MILF chief negotiator Mohagher Iqbal said the government’s decision to present “a totally unacceptable” draft agreement in Malaysia turned the negotiations into “a circus.”
Accusing the government of introducing conditions not previously discussed, Iqbal added: “It is better to have no agreement at all than to enter into a bad agreement.”
“This ugly turn of events in the peace process is taxing the patience of the MILF and the Bangsamoro people, who may be compelled to resort to other means, pacific or otherwise, of resolving the Mindanao conflict when they are pushed to the wall and become hopeless in the present peace process,” he said.
The MILF panel walked out of the negotiations set for Dec. 15 to 17 after seeing a copy of the government draft agreement that included conditions that the MILF never approved.
Iqbal blamed people in “the corridors of power” for spoiling the peace process with the revisions, without the knowledge of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
Presidential adviser on the peace process Jesus Dureza said Mrs. Arroyo included the aborted Kuala Lumpur talks in the agenda of today’s security meeting.
“We admit that there were some provisions—constitutional provisions—that were inserted and we need to clarify these. The MILF is entitled to their own opinion, but we are trying to address the situation,” Dureza said in a telephone interview.
He was non-committal when asked if the insertions could be removed, saying the President must first hear from government chief negotiator Rodolfo Garcia.
MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said the government’s use of the 1987 Constitution to grant economic control to the rebel group was unacceptable, but would not elaborate.
Both Kabalu and Garcia were not optimistic that the January 2008 target for signing the ancestral domain agreement would still be met. With Florante S. Solmerin
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment