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| Southeast Asia |
| OIC rejects Bangsamoro peace pact |
| 2014-06-21 |
| The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) has called unacceptable the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro signed by the Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) because it failed to incorporate the Tripoli and Jakarta agreements brokered by the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) led by its founding chairman Nur Misuari. The OIC instead proposed a linkage of the government’s peace agreements with the MILF and the MNLF. At the Islamic Conference of Foreign Ministers Session of Exploring Areas of Islamic Cooperation held in Saudi Arabia, OIC secretary-general Iyad Ameen Madani said, "The support of the rapprochement on both fronts and legal follow up of the implementation of the new agreement and the compliance of the Philippine government to its text and soul is unavoidable if we want Bangsamoro Muslim people in the Philippines to obtain their most basic rights." Madani said that there was a need to do this because "all factions" of the MNLF opposed the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (CAB) and the declared texts of the new pact "do not mention or build explicitly" on the Tripoli and Jakarta Agreements of 1976 and 1997 with the MNLF. The MILF negotiating panel led by Mohaqer Iqbal attended the conference to personally seek recognition of the CAB from the OIC. MNLF Spokesman Absalom Cerveza claimed to have no knowledge of who from the OIC invited the MILF panel at the conference, but said that the Nur Misuari faction of the MNLF was invited to attend the event by Madani himself. But the OIC, according to Cerveza, did not recognize the government’s MNLF faction after it discovered that it did not have the imprimatur of Misuari, prompting the government’s MNLF faction to walk out of the conference after the meeting with Madani. Cerveza said, "What I learned is that the OIC turned down the MILF’s plea for the OIC to recognize CAB because the OIC wants the synchronization of the MILF and MNLF agreements into one agreement." Cerveza said Iqbal had refused OIC synchronization efforts because the former claimed that the two agreements "will never meet". Cerveza also alleged that the Philippine government was pressuring the OIC to recognize the CAB. |
| Posted by:ryuge |