IT is after midnight and all is quiet at the Hotel Sari Pan Pacific in Jakarta. That is, except in the room of Professor Nur Misuari, the chairman of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the armed resistance group fighting for an autonomous state in the southern Philippines region of Mindanao.
He is too busy waging the MNLF's new war, a 24-hour public relations campaign, to turn in for the night.
Shoes off and bleary-eyed, he looks exhausted after five days of round-the-clock peace talks with the Philippine Government. 'The problem is really a question of sincerity,' he said. 'It is a question of whether they [the Philippine Government] know their responsibility towards the people in the south, the country as a whole, the people in Southeast Asia . . . and ultimately towards the people of the world.' As the last delegates to the Third Formal Peace Talks on Mindanao prepared to leave Indonesia yesterday, the future of the process was still up in the air. Touted as the last in a series of meetings dating from 1973, delegates instead agreed to hold another round at a date yet to be decided.
'We have not yet reached the end of our quest, but we have reached the final crossroads,' said Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas, chairman of the peace panel, in his closing speech last week.
'The next step will have to take us either of two ways. One leads to continued strife and suffering. But the other, which, of course demands some compromise, will lead to . . . a just peace and shared prosperity.' Professor Misuari put it in more extreme terms. 'Now we are at the crossroads,' he said. 'To the right, peace. To the left, a bottomless pit that will claim our children, our families, posterity.' For the beleaguered Moro people, final agreement would indeed be a turning point. Of Malayan stock, they trace the beginnings of their kingdom back to the Muslim sultanates of Mindanao, Basilan, Sulu and Palawan established in the early 15th century. They claim theirs is the world's oldest political conflict, beginning with the arrival of the Spanish in 1521.
'People have to take us seriously when we make this claim,' said Professor Misuari. 'Under my leadership alone this is already 27 years of uninterrupted struggle and war.' The Spanish left in 1898, only to be replaced by the United States and then the Japanese in World War II. However, the Moro claim they were able to maintain their independence until they were annexed by the newly-formed republic of the Philippines in 1946. From then on, the struggle took on the semblance of a civil war.