By Hader Glang
ZAMBOANGA CITY
The Philippine government’s chief negotiator promised Saturday that last week’s violence in Mindanao would not divert the peace process.
Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, chairwoman of the government peace panel, said: "This is not the first ugly turn we have endured in this difficult journey to peace in Mindanao, to peace in our country, but we want it to be the last."
Last Sunday’s battle in the township of Mamasapano, Maguindanao province, saw 44 police commandos and 18 fighters from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, known as the MILF, killed. The violence had threatened to derail the peace process between the two sides.
In a joint statement emailed to The Anadolu Agency, MILF chief negotiator Mohagher Iqbal extended his condolences to the families of "those who have fallen in the Mamasapano incident."
He added: "No amount of obstacles can stop us in pursuit of peace in Mindanao.”
On Thursday, the government and the MILF signed a decommissioning agreement in Kuala Lumpur, to be overseen by a decommissioning body led by Turkish diplomat Haydar Berk.
Coronel-Ferrer said an arms handover ceremony will be held in March.
The two sides signed a peace deal last year that will grant greater autonomy to the Muslim-majority provinces in the southern Philippines, ending a decades-long insurgency that has seen 120,000 people killed.
