Philippine offers autonomy to Muslims

KUALA LUMPUR: The Philippine on Monday offered Muslim militants waging a decades-long insurgency the prospect of autonomy, on the condition to first lay down their arms and a peace pact was likely years away.

The offer was contained in the government's proposal for peace with the 12,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) at the start of three days of talks in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.

"This proposal presents the possibility of a more empowered, more workable and thus, more genuine autonomy of a Bangsamoro (Filipino Muslim) region," the government said in a statement summarising its offer.

The government did not make public all the specific details, but hinted the area could expand and improve the existing Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), which groups five Muslim provinces in the country's troubled south.

The ARMM was created in the 1980s to accommodate the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), then the country's largest Muslim rebel group from which the MILF splintered in 1978.

The MNLF signed a peace deal with Manila in 1996, and its leader was made the head of the ARMM, but the government statement described it as a "failed experiment".

The proposal also includes "a system of cooperation" by which the government and the MILF could share revenue from natural resources exploited from the region.

However, for any final peace deal to take place, the government demanded that the MILF disarm and allow its fighters to be rehabilitated into society.

And while describing its proposal as "politically comprehensive", it indicated the most sensitive issues would not be addressed immediately.

"The proposal works with what is available and doable within the next few years. It does not start with contentious and divisive issues whose resolution may not be realisable as yet," the statement said.

Monday's proposal was the first by the government since the Supreme Court in 2008 outlawed another proposed autonomy deal that would have given the MILF control over 700 towns and villages in the south, including some Christian areas.

Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2011