A senior member of the Moro Islamic Liberation Peace Panel negotiating team has told members of a women’s committee not to be duped by the recent success of the talks in Kuala Lumpur and to bear in mind that the road ahead for the peace process is still full of twists and turns that can easily overturn the direction of the talks. Government and MILF peace negotiators met in Kuala Lumpur in an executive session or special meeting on October 23-24, 2007 with strand territory of the Ancestral Domain Aspect of the Tripoli Agreement of 2001 as the main agenda.


Mohagher Iqbal, chairperson of the MILF peace panel, described the latest success in Kuala Lumpur wherein the Parties managed to hurdle the contentious issues on the immediate areas covered by the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity (BJE) as a hard earned points for the government and MILF negotiators, just enough to break the more than a year impasse of the talks since September 2006.

The talks deadlocked over the size of the territory of the BJE and how to effect delivery of these areas to the BJE. The government offered small and scattered areas after it conducted a plebiscite. The MILF, on the other hand, wanted a bigger and contiguous areas and without a plebiscite. However, it said that the government can conduct a plebiscite but the MILF is not a party but the result will be to deliver the areas as agreed upon by the Parties.

 Iqbal stressed that the remaining unresolved issues are still more contentious than what have been hurdled by the Parties.

 “Expect more and more deadlocks in the future,” he warned them, even as he consoled them that with a solid organization and the support of the international community the road ahead is not hopeless.

 He paid tribute to the efforts of the Malaysian Government through its chief facilitator Datuk Othman bin Abdul Razak and ably assisted notably by Madame Hasanah binti Abdul Hamid and Ahmad Faris Ahmad, both of the Research Department of the Prime Minister’s Department that made this movement forward possible.

Datuk Othman is currently special adviser to the Prime Minister.

Also in the lead roles in this success were Dato Fauzi bin Daud, head of the Research Department, whose office the peace talks have been channeled. Also deserving equal mention is Dato Zamzamin bin Hashim, deputy head of the Research Department.

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