MANILA — The Philippine government and the country’s main Muslim rebel group said Sunday they hoped to sign within weeks a final peace deal to end decades of deadly insurgency after clearing the last hurdle in 18 years of negotiations.
A “comprehensive agreement” with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) should be signed in February or March, Manila’s chief negotiator Miriam Coronel-Ferrer told AFP, following a breakthrough announced on Saturday.
“We have just been discussing the next steps and our goal is to be able to get a good schedule for that,” she said from the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur where the last round of talks was held.
“We have set a time frame of between February and March,” she added.
The talks that began in 1996 with the 12,000-strong MILF are aimed at ending an insurgency in the country’s south that has left an estimated 150,000 people dead since the 1970s.
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