ILOILO CITY, Philippines, March 19, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) – Philippine government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) negotiators have finally agreed on a date to resume their oft-postponed negotiations.

Government peace negotiator Secretary Silvestre Afable announced Friday, March 18, that peace talks, seeking an end to three decades of intermittent fighting that killed and displaced thousands in Mindanao island, will resume on April 16 in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.

“We have a consensus with the Malaysian government that abundant goodwill has been invested in the ceasefire, which has held firm for a year and a half, to move on to the meat of the negotiations,” he said after a four-hour meeting with MILF Chairman Al Hadj Murad.

Afable said President Gloria Arroyo is backing the peace talks, which was supposed to take place last month after it was re-scheduled from December 2004, “with full political will and everybody on board wants to respond with strong momentum.”

The meeting was sponsored and attended by Othman Bin Abd. Razak, director general of the Malaysian Prime Minister’s Office.

“Chairman Murad confirmed that the MILF technical team has been organized and is ready to be fielded for the talks,” Afable said, adding that the government was likewise ready for full-blown technical discussions on key ancestral domain issues that are high on the agenda.

The issue on ancestral domain is said to be the most contentious issue in the peace talks, with a government draft of the peace agreement recognizing the rights of Bangsamoro and Lumad indigenous people over their ancestral domain.

A report entitled “Human Rights Treatise on Ancestral Domain”, published by Ateneo Human Rights Center in 1996 with support from Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), stressed: “After decades of encroachment of their ancestral lands by loggers, ranchers, miners, lowland migrants, and multinational and government corporations, the tribal Filipinos have found themselves more and more marginalized.

“Dire poverty has eventually driven many tribal Filipinos to work as underpaid miners, plantation workers, and logging concession laborers of giant corporations which have taken over their ancestral lands.”

Afable, meanwhile, said both sides acknowledged the success of the ground-level cease-fire as well as joint efforts to neutralize lawless groups.

“The MILF Chairman is committed to a sincere partnership with the government to work for a final solution to the conflict and I have utmost confidence that the MILF Central Committee and the MILF peace panel will bring this goal to its logical conclusion,” he said.

Afable added that the discussions with Murad covered the full range of items in the peace process, including a larger role for the Bangsamoro Development Agency and the need for broader consultations with the people to bring them within the mainstream of the negotiation agenda.

“Othman conveyed to us the unremitting commitment of the Malaysian Government to host the peace talks, lead the International Monitoring Team (IMT) and accept MILF nominees for capacity-building programs in Malaysia.”

Afable added that both sides are grateful that Malaysia is involved in the full menu of the peace process, together with Brunei and Libya in the IMT.

The MILF has been fighting to reclaim Mindanao, tipped to be the richest in natural resources among the three islands of the country, for some three decades now.

It has tried to reach a peaceful solution to the problem through peace talks, which has intermittently been stalled by skirmishes over the years.

The latest bid for a peaceful end to the conflict is being brokered by the Malaysian government.

An international team from Malaysia, Brunei and Libya was sent by the Organization of Islamic Conference last year to observe the ceasefire reached by both parties.