E-MAIL THIS LINK
To: 

Filippino government, MILF tap dance around JI issue
The ceasefire committees of the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have included in the agenda in today’s joint meeting, the reported Jemaah Islamiyah training activities in Mindanao but mainly because they want to jointly come up with “categorical answers” on the “perplexing questions” repeatedly raised by the foreign press. Lt. Gen. Rodolfo Garcia, the Armed Forces vice chief of staff and chair of the government’s Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities (CCCH), noted that the news of JI training in MILF-held areas mostly came from the foreign press. “I don’t know where the foreign media is getting these reports,” he told a press conference during a break in the 15th Joint CCCH meeting at the Tower Inn today.
I dunno. I usually get it from the Manila Times or Jakarta Post...
But Garcia said media reports on the JI are “certainly an important issue” that the joint government-MILF CCCH has to tackle “because it has a way of affecting the peace process.” The JI issue was raised in the press conference by a visiting foreigner, the deputy bureau chief of Reuters in Manila. “We need to exchange notes and also get responses from the government and from the MILF side pertaining to Jemaah Islamiyah and be able to come up with some definitive and categorical answers to some perplexing questions that have been raised particularly by the foreign media,” Garcia said.

Garcia noted that the latest of the string of foreign media reports on the JI is that 15 trainees recently graduated from training sites in Maguindanao province. “It is in this ceasefire committee that matters like this (reported graduation of 15 JI trainees) are also taken up to be able to get from our MILF counterparts assurances or actions that have been done, confirmatory or not, as they continue to come,” Garcia said.

Previous CCCH meetings have also tabled the JI issue and that members of the joint committees have initiated fact finding missions, along with some members of civil society groups, to verify these reports, Garcia said. Benjie Midtimbang, MILF CCCH chair, said allegations linking the MILF to the JI which had been linked to the series of bombing operations in Mindanao, Metro Manila and other parts of Southeast Asia, have come mainly from different media organizations. He said the matter has also been tabled by the CCCH in its past meetings based on media reports and that they had agreed to jointly conduct investigations in areas where the JI trainings were reportedly done in consonance with the MILF policy of helping the government solve the series of bombings in Mindanao and even in the neighboring countries.

He said members of the joint CCCH visited last December, Cararao, a mountain in the borders of Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur, where JI recruits have reportedly trained. “I am proud to inform you, brother, that no one was found as a member of the Jemaah Islamiyah” he said.
I think Dan predicted that when the name first came up...
Midtimbang said a television media crew who went with them can attest and show other members of the media the result of this fact-finding mission. Midtimbang also said that the MILF has enforced a long-standing policy that “any member of the MILF must never link with any group who are suspected to be members of criminal elements.”

“We are not criminal people, we are Muslims who always want to protect lives and properties be he a Christian or a Muslim. It is not within the vocabulary of the MILF to have links with these groups,” he said. Midtimbang said they have made assurances to their counterparts in the government CCCH that they will not allow criminal or suspected terrorists to use any part of the areas held by the MILF.
Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-02-08
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=25829