Manila, Muslim rebels resolve impasse in talks

MANILA, Mar 2 (Reuters) The Philippine government hopes to resume stalled peace talks with the country's largest Muslim rebel group before national elections on May 14, Manila's chief peace negotiator today said.

Negotiations to end nearly 40 years of conflict that has killed more than 120,000 people have been stalled since May 2006 over the size and wealth of a proposed ancestral homeland for 3 million Muslims in the south of the mainly Catholic country.

''The impasse in the peace talks had been resolved,'' Silvestre Afable, Manila's chief peace negotiator, told a news conference after signing an agreement with Japan's development agency to pour economic projects into Mindanao.

''There's already an informal understanding on the political aspect of the negotiations but the issue on territory remained unresolved.'' Afable declined to elaborate on the consensus points agreed by two sides, but was confident that formal talks would soon resume as all parties, including Malaysia, which has been brokering the talks since 2001, agreed on a schedule.

Afable, former communications director at the office of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, said the talks could resume before the May 14 mid-term elections although the two sides had already met three times for ''backroom discussions''.

''There's some movement but we could not say there's already an agreement unless we sign something on paper,'' Mohaqher Iqbal, the rebels' chief negotiator, told Reuters from his base on the troubled southern island of Mindanao.

''We're seeing some encouraging signs because there were some improvements in the government's new proposal to expand areas to be covered by the proposed Bangsamoro homeland.'' Iqbal said the two sides were due to hold informal meetings within the month to assess the political situation and ask the Malaysian government to set a date for the next round of formal peace negotiations.

Since 2004, a 60-member monitoring team from Malaysia, Libya and Brunei has been deployed in Mindanao to sustain the July 2003 truce between security forces and MILF rebels, preventing some skirmishes from escalating into a full-blown shooting war.

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