[Straits Times] MUSLIM rebels waging a 32-year war in the southern Philippines on Wednesday said a peace deal with President Gloria Arroyo's administration was unlikely, after rejecting its latest offer.The government's proposal made when talks in Malaysia resumed last month, was 'unacceptable", the negotiator for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) negotiator, Mohagher Iqbal, told AFP. 'There was nothing in their draft comprehensive compact agreement that is worth considering at this stage,' Iqbal said. In Manila's proposal, the government offered to share power in areas such as tax collection and control of natural resources the MILF considers as its 'ancestral domain' on the southern island of Mindanao.
Iqbal, however, dismissed the proposal as a resurrection of two previous offers under which 'government would continue to rule the lives of the Muslims'.
That means they want to be able to chop people's heads off.
'What we want is a real state and sub-state relationship where we can have real governance and control over our lives,' Iqbal said. 'We don't want to be a mere token administrative arm for the region.'
He said that MILF and government negotiators were trying to break the deadlock, but he said any deal before Arroyo ended her term as president on June 30 was unlikely. 'The prospects for a final accord before Arroyo steps down is not good,' Iqbal said.
However chief government negotiator Annabelle Abaya said she was still hopeful of sealing an agreement during Arroyo's term, and that talks were due to resume in March. She said the whole idea behind the exchange of draft proposals was for each side to see how they could bridge their differences before the talks begin. Arroyo signed a ceasefire with the MILF in 2003 to pave the way for peace talks to end an insurgency that began in 1978 and has killed over 150,000 people.