Norway wants to help monitor government-MILF truce

CAMP SIONGCO, Maguindanao , Philippines  – Norway is interested in helping monitor the ceasefire between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), now being observed by a multi-national contingent led by Malaysia.

The MILF’s website, www.luwaran.net, has posted that the Norwegian government, however, still has to set certain conditions on its role in the enforcement of ceasefire in flashpoint areas in Mindanao.

The 1997 GRP-MILF Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities is being monitored by the International Monitoring Team (IMT) since 2003 composed of soldiers and policemen from Malaysia, Brunei and Libya, and a Japanese civilian rehabilitation specialist.

The www.luwaran.net said Norway still has to discuss the intricacies of its involvement in the IMT with the government and MILF panels.

The IMT’s operation involves not only monitoring the ceasefire, but also helping oversee civilian protection and rehabilitation initiatives of the government and MILF panels for conflict-stricken areas in the South.

Peace talks between the government and the MILF, often punctuated by security problems in many flashpoint areas, started on Jan. 7, 1997, but gained headway only in 2003 with the help of Malaysia as third party facilitator.

Peace advocacy outfits helping push forward the peace talks are elated with Norway’s intention of helping monitor the ceasefire in the South.

“The GRP-MILF peace effort is now becoming a show window of international cooperation on resolving the so-called Mindanao problem. This is good,” said Oblate missionary Eliseo Mercado Jr., director of the Institute on Autonomy and Governance, a partner of Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Stiftung.

There has been a fragile peace in many areas in Central Mindanao where soldiers and MILF forces clashed repeatedly the past years due to the resumption early this year of the IMT’s operation.

“The more countries participate in the monitoring of the ceasefire between the government and the MILF, the better. The more observers, the more religious will the enforcement by the military and the MILF of the ceasefire become,” said Ali Macabalang, director of the information bureau of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).

The MILF has more than 50 enclaves in the ARMM, which groups the provinces of Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi, and the cities of Lamitan and Marawi.