‘We never gave up on peace’

MANILA, Philippines - Over a decade after a peace agreement ended the violent conflict in Northern Ireland, a key negotiator of the pact is pitching the dividends of peace.

Even if at times the Northern Irish were close to despair over their peace process, David Trimble said yesterday that they “never gave up.”

Trimble, who won the Nobel Peace Prize together with David Hume for the Good Friday peace agreement, said Northern Ireland is now “a very different place from where it was 10, 15 years ago.”

“Having peace itself improves the quality of life,” Trimble told a small group of journalists yesterday.

Some quarters have greeted with skepticism the framework agreement signed recently by Manila with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), pointing out that the government has yet to fully implement the 1996 peace agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).

While emphasizing that the conflict in Northern Ireland was different from the Islamic secessionist problem in Mindanao, Trimble said he is in Manila to share the Irish experience in the long road to peace, and to learn from the Philippine experience.

He said peace negotiators must focus on realities, taking into consideration the needs of the other side and making compromises, to achieve lasting peace.

Trimble, who arrived Wednesday for a five-day visit, met with Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Teresita Deles.

“Obviously there are some parallels between the situation here and the situation in Northern Ireland. There are also considerable differences. One should not focus on the comparisons between the two, but focus on the realities of whatever situation we’re dealing with,” Trimble said. 

He said it is useful to exchange experiences because it gives negotiators greater confidence in their assessment of the situation “even if there are differences.”

Deles said the Philippines could learn much from Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement, but added that there were no fixed templates for a peace process.

She added that cooperation of all parties involved as well as public support were needed to make the Mindanao peace process successful.     

The Good Friday Agreement ended the bloody conflict in 1998. It established the Northern Ireland Assembly with devolved legislative powers.

Trimble, at the time the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party and considered instrumental in reaching the peace accord, had earlier stressed the importance of people’s support to make the peace process work. 

Trimble received the Nobel Peace Prize in October 1998 together with Social Democratic and Labour Party founder John Hume for their successful efforts to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland. Trimble served as First Minister of Northern Ireland.

Smooth sailing

As this developed, government peace panel chairman Marvic Leonen said that the crafting of annexes on power-sharing, wealth-sharing and normalization between the government and the MILF is going smoothly due to the goodwill being shown by both parties.  

Leonen said the government and MILF peace panels, now in their 33rd round of formal exploratory talks in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, came prepared and aware of the challenges involved.

He said the level of consensus between the government and MILF is a welcome surprise.

“Prior to this round, several meetings on the normalization process were done. It only goes to show that the government hopes to work things out in order to finish the comprehensive agreement within the timeline agreed upon,” Leonen said. 

Gaining international support

Meanwhile, former Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. said that political parties from the Asia-Pacific region, Latin America, and the Caribbean have endorsed the Framework Agreement between the Philippine government and the MILF.

De Venecia said the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) and the Permanent Conference of Political Parties of Latin America, (COPPPAL) in their first joint meeting in Mexico last month, also expressed optimism that a final peace pact would be forged between the government and the MILF under the Aquino administration.

Established in 2000, the ICAPP is composed of 380 parties from 52 Asia-Pacific countries with Australia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, Turkey and Vietnam as members of its standing committee.

COPPPAL, established in 1979, is composed of political parties from 29 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.

The two groups met jointly for the first time in Mexico last month to discuss various global issues, including resolving territorial disputes as well as ethnic and religious conflicts.

Top political leaders of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao earlier called for a massive information dissemination campaign to give Filipinos a better understanding of the framework agreement. – Jose Rodel Clapano, Paolo Romero