The Philippine government's chief peace adviser has said war 'is not an option' for ending the Muslim rebellion in the south.
'The worst peace is always better than the best war,' said Hermogenes Esperon, who took up his advisory post after retiring in May as chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
In a wide-ranging interview with the South China Morning Post at the Supreme Court on Friday, Mr Esperon said the government must proceed with the signing of a deal on 'ancestral domain', the expansion of the Muslim homeland in the south and the granting of broad powers of self-government. He was at the court to answer a petition calling for the scrapping of the deal, which he brokered last month.
Mr Esperon was speaking before the outbreak of violence in the south at the weekend. In a brief interview yesterday, he said he stood by his earlier remarks but added: 'We have to take care of our communities. We have to defend our communities but this is different from waging a war, going on the offensive.'
The role of peacemaker represents a stunning conversion for Mr Esperon, who as military chief had vowed to crush communist rebels and played a big part in seizing Muslim rebel camps.
Mr Esperon said the Philippines, reeling from rising oil and food prices, could not afford a war. He said the all-out war launched against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in 2000, under then president Joseph Estrada, had cost 1.13 billion pesos (HK$194.88 million) 'and that's a conservative estimate'.