The Philippine troops and anti-government rebels might break cease-fire and resume decades-old deadly clashes once Malaysian peacekeepers are pulled out from the southern Philippines, Manila's senior official said Tuesday.
Rodolfo Garcia, the chief negotiator of the Philippine government, told local television network ABS-CBN News that the stable and peaceful condition now enjoyed in the contingency-rife Mindanao "would not be very sure if the Malaysians end their presence."
Malaysian Foreign Minister Rais Yatim on Monday said Malaysia plans not to send more troops or other personnel to the southern Philippine island of Mindanao once the current mandate of its monitoring team ends in September.
Though Yatim did not elaborate on the reasons for the potential pullout, over the years Malaysian officials have been threatening to withdraw its peace-keepers for lack of apparent sincerity between Philippine government and the 12,000-member Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to ink a final peace agreement.
The MILF, fighting for a Muslim state in southern Philippines since its founding in 1978, signed a transient truce with the government in 2003 but peace talks have been on and off as the two sides can not agree on the size and wealth of the proposed ancestral homeland for Muslims in Mindanao.
And a lack of coordination between both sides has often resulted in fatal encounters.
The Malaysia-led foreign peace monitoring team, composed of 56 unarmed army officials and police, landed in the southern Philippines in October 2004. The deployment of the team has greatly decreased violence between the Philippine military and the Muslim rebels.
Garcia said the incidents of violence in the region were reduced from about 700 in 2002 to just about a dozen each year for the last four years.
The MILF told local media that Malaysians were not to blame andit was the Philippine government that has been "dragging its feet" over the creation of a Muslim homeland.
The latest peace talks stalled in December 2007 after the MILF accused the government of changing a number of consensus points ina proposed agreement on Muslim homeland.
Interviewed by local media, Garcia admitted that the issue of ancestral domain is the biggest stumbling stone in the peace talks but he said he was hopeful that the two sides would sign the final peace agreement in August.
Source:Xinhua
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