COTABATO CITY (Mindanao Examiner / 19 Jun) – Two senior Arroyo government advsiers were said to be behind the resignation of the country’s chief peace negotiator with Muslim rebels in the restive southern Mindanao region.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) tagged Presidential peace adviser Jesus Dureza and National Security adviser Norberto Gonzales as behind the replacement of Silvestre Afable as head of the government peace panel.
A Catholic priest, Eliseo Mercado, is named new government peace negotiator.
“We have unimpeachable sources from the Palace that told us the two – Dureza and Gonzales – are behind Afable’s sudden resignation,” the head of the MILF peace panel, Mohagher Iqbal, told the regional newspaper, the Mindanao Examiner.
Iqbal said the two officials, with the participation of an unidentified, but influential religious group, hatched the plan to remove Afable last week for still unknown reasons.
“Afable’s resignation is a set back to the peace process. Afable has done so much for the peace process,” he said.
He called Dureza and Gonzales as “gigolo and spoilers of the peace process.”
Dureza was a former lead government negotiator with the MILF, but had resigned after rebel leaders accused him of secretly inserting a provision on a previously signed agreement.
The two officials were not immediately available to comment on the allegations.
The MILF is the country’s largest Muslim rebel group fighting for a separate homeland in the troubled, but mineral-rich region of Mindanao. (Mindanao Examiner)
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