The Philippine government has ended peace talks with the country’s largest Muslim group, junking an 11-year peace process to solve the conflict in the Muslim-majority south.
"There are no more talks," presidential spokesman Jesus Dureza told Reuters on Wednesday, September 3.
"We’re dissolving the peace panel. You don’t need it when you’re ending talks with an armed group.
"We’ll start consulting with the people on the ground and find out how can we resolve the Muslim problem."
Manila and the MILF were supposed to sign a peace deal last month to end the four-decade conflict in the south.
But the Supreme Court froze the deal over protests from Christian groups, angering some MILF commanders to launch attacks in the south.
The deal had called for the establishment of a Muslim ancestral homeland in the south with its own "basic law," police and internal security force.
The region would have been allowed to run its own banking and finance system, civil service, education and legislative and electoral institutions.
It would also have been given full authority to develop and dispose of minerals and other natural resources within its territory.
No Peace Deal
Manila also said it would no longer sign a draft peace deal with the MILF to establish a Muslim homeland in the south.
"In light of recent violent incidents committed by lawless violent groups, the government will not sign the MOA-AD (memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain)," President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said in a statement.
"There will be no peace gained through violence, no peace agreement can and will be reached through intimidation or the barrel of a gun."
The move signals a dramatic change in Arroyo’s long-standing policy of continuing a peace process with the MILF to end the conflict in the south before her presidential term expires in 2010.
Manila has been in on-off talks with the MILF since 1997 to end the four-decade conflict that has killed 120,000 people.
The MILF said the government decision shows intention to step up military attacks in the Muslim-majority region.
"I don’t want to imagine that happening, but the MILF is prepared for any offensive," MILF’s chief negotiator Mohagher Iqbal told Agence France-Presse (AFP).
"We have to invoke our right to self-defense."
Mineral-rich Mindanao, Islam’s birthplace in the Philippines, is home to ore than 5 million Muslims.
Muslims make up nearly 8 percent of the total populace in Catholic Philippines, which Islam reached in the 13th century about 200 years before Christianity.