SULTAN KUDARAT, Philippines – The leader of the Muslim insurgency in the southern Philippines said Saturday he would not turn over two of his commanders to authorities despite bloody attacks they launched last year.
- However, Murad Ibrahim, chairman of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) said his group was still keen on peace talks with Manila.
- Speaking at a MILF camp outside the city of Cotabato, Ibrahim said the group would not give in to demands they turn over Ameril Umbrakato and Abdulrahman Macapaar who are blamed for attacks in Mindanao island in August, 2008.
- "There is no way we can surrender them. The government has made the case against them but we don't recognise that case," he told AFP.
- He said there should be an investigation of the incidents by a third party and if the two are found to have violated certain laws "then we have to sanction them based on our own laws."
- He warned that "trust and confidence was completely shattered," after the Supreme Court last year junked a draft agreement with the MILF due to a widespread outcry from Christian communities.
- The court's move sparked the attacks by Umbrakato and Macapaar against mostly-Christian towns in Mindanao that left scores dead and over half a million displaced.
- The attacks broke a five-year ceasefire between the government and the MILF and halted the peace talks.
- The government put a half a million-peso (104,000-dollar) reward on each of the commanders' heads and demanded that the MILF turn them over if they wanted the peace talks to proceed.
- However Manila later softened this stance and on Wednesday signed an agreement allowing international peace brokers to be involved in negotiations aimed at ending the decades-old uprising.
- Despite the violence, Ibrahim said he was committed to finding a peaceful solution to the problem but called on the government to show "political will".
- The 12,000-member MILF has been waging a separatist rebellion since 1978 to carve out an Islamic state in the southern part of the largely Catholic Philippines.
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