|
Manila: The Philippines will hold a plebiscite early next year in more than 700 southern villages to set up an ancestral homeland for Muslims, part of a deal with the country's biggest rebel group, officials said on on Thursday.
Hermogenes Esperon, the president's peace adviser, said the proposed Muslim homeland would also be empowered to collect about 75 per cent of taxes from oil, mines and fisheries in the area.
He was speaking in Manila a day after government and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (Milf) negotiators hammered out a deal in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital.
"The government has agreed to grant broader political, social and economic power to the Muslims based on a deal we have reached with the rebels in Malaysia," Esperon said, adding everything that was agreed was within the country's constitution.
The deal would expand the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, an area in the south of the mainly Catholic Philippines that was carved out in an agreement with another Muslim rebel group, the Moro National Liberation Front (Mnlf). Esperon said he could not reveal the full details of the deal with the Milf due to the confidentiality of the negotiations, but said it went beyond the earlier agreement with the Mnlf.
Final meeting
He said the government and the MILF were due to meet in Kuala Lumpur on July 24 to finalise the draft agreement and fix the date for the formal signing of the deal on ancestral domain, which was likely within a few months.
"We promised to deliver a plebiscite within six months after the signing of the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain," Esperon said.
The landmark deal was welcomed, but analysts and residents in the south said more is needed to be done.
Fundamental issues, such as the right of Muslims to self-determination, remained unresolved, they said.
They said the agreement did not guarantee the end of a near 40-year conflict that has killed 120,000 people and displaced two million on the resource-rich southern island of Mindanao.
The two sides have been observing a ceasefire since 2003, although tensions sometimes erupt into fighting.
|
