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Manila: Malaysia said on Thursday it will not abandon the peace process in the Philippines' troubled south, where Muslim rebels are fighting for autonomy, despite the withdrawal of its peacekeepers starting this month.
"We are not abandoning the peace process. We have provided the platform for the peace process to continue and we are looking into, maybe, a new format to hasten it," General Abdul Aziz, head of the Malaysian defence forces, told reporters after talks with senior generals in Manila.
Extension ruled out
Unarmed Malaysian peacekeepers have been posted in Mindanao since 2004 to help bring an end to nearly 40 years of conflict that claimed more than 120,000 lives and displaced 2 million people.
Last week, Malaysian Foreign Minister Rais Yatim said his country was not in favour of extending the mission of the International Monitoring Team (IMT) when it expires later this year because the peace process was not moving fast enough. "If one party is not making the effort, we will have to end the mission," he was quoted as saying by Malaysia's national news agency Bernama on April 23.
Government officials and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have expressed concern that violence could break out once the Malaysians withdraw.
The 11,000-member MILF has been in on-and-off talks with the government for more than a decade. The most recent round of peace talks, brokered by Malaysia from 2001, has been stalled since December 2007, when the MILF accused the government of bending a proposed agreement on a Muslim homeland in the south.
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