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Moro muslims say still interested in peace but no trust in govt

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Moro Muslims said MILF was still interested in seeking a peaceful solution, but was not hopeful of striking any deal with the present government.

Moro Muslims said Thursday they do not trust the Philippines government to reopen stalled peace talks and are seeking international intervention to resolve the issue.

Mohaqher Iqbal, the chief negotiator, said the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) was still interested in seeking a peaceful solution, but was not hopeful of striking any deal with the present government.

"We did not start this problem," Iqbal told Reuters. "We believe it would be very difficult to restart the talks because the government has dissolved its panel and the court has struck down the ancestral domain agreement as unconstitutional."

He was referring to the government’s negotiating peace panel and the fact that the Philippines’ high court had halted the signing of an agreement between the government and the MILF that would have expanded an existing Muslim autonomous region, giving it wider political, social and economic powers.

Iqbal said the leadership had lost its trust in the government’s ability to commit to any political deal and to carry it out.

Speaking at the United Nations in New York on Wednesday, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo insisted her government remained committed to the peace process despite escalating killings in the south.

Humanitarian problem

On Thursday, soldiers killed at least 15 Muslim fighters in fresh fighting on Mindanao, an army spokesman said, adding the two sides traded mortar fire for nearly three hours.

Almost 300 people have been killed in nearly three months of fighting between security forces and renegades from the MILF. The fighting has displaced more than 650,000 people.

Aid workers expressed concerned about the health of those displaced by armed clashes and aerial bombardments.

"Because large numbers of displaced people are crowded together, they are vulnerable to diarrhoea and respiratory infection," said Robert Paterson, an International Committee of the Red Cross medical delegate in the Philippines.

There have already been three deaths due to diarrhoea in the affected region, he said in a statement released in Geneva.

OIC call

Yesterday, the Secretary General of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC), Professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, expressed his deep concern about the increasing deterioration of the situation in the southern Philippines due to continued military operations, severely affecting civilians. The uninterrupted military operations have resulted in the displacement of more than half a million civilians who live in shelters in dire conditions.

Ihsanoglu warned that this situation empowers undisciplined elements who seek to abort the peace process and fuel extremist feelings.

He urged the government of the Philippines and President Maria Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to rapidly return to the negotiating table in order to work out creative solutions matching agreements with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the requirements of the Supreme Constitutional Court, while continuing to work in the same positive spirit that led to the accomplishments made so far through negotiations and build upon these achievements in a bid to reach the just and durable peace desired by all

The Secretary General called upon the leadership of the MILF to work with the government of the Philippines to save the peace process from sliding into further deterioration and resume negotiations. He expressed his confidence that the leaderships of the negotiating parties have a sense of wisdom and responsibility to work together in order to find a proper way out of this crisis which threatens to thwart the peace process.

As for the special efforts slated to alleviate the suffering of displaced persons, Ihsanoglu emphasized that he would deploy efforts to mobilize resources from the OIC affiliated institutions and organs to alleviate the suffering of the displaced population.

The Philippines, an archipelagic country located in the western Pacific Ocean, has a population of 90 million people. The population of Muslims is about 12 million. Between the years 1450 and 1515, two Islamic principalities were founded on the islands of Sulu and Mindanao. Islam came to the Philippines in the 13th century 200 years before Christianity did.

 

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Malaysia pm global crisis a chance for islamic banking to shine

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Malaysia PM called on Islamic banking to work on clarifying and resolving conflicts in interpretation over what products are allowed under religious laws.

The global economic crisis presents an opportunity for Islamic banking to show it is a viable alternative to conventional finance, Malaysia’s premier said according to reports Wednesday.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said the meltdown showed the need for laws enshrined in Islamic banking, which prohibits speculation and high levels of debt, and which has so far been relatively unscathed by the credit crunch.

"These ethical and moral safeguards are missing in the conventional system," Abdullah said in a speech, adding that the crisis was caused by trade in loans which few truly understood.

"In reality these repackaged sub-prime loans were nothing more than artful works of deception that fed the speculative excesses and hubris in the financial markets," he said at the launch of an Islamic law research academy.

However, he called on Islamic banking — a booming 1.0 trillion dollar global industry — to work on clarifying and resolving conflicts in interpretation over what products are allowed under religious laws.

"The Islamic finance community should not be complacent or unduly proud. We must continue to critically evaluate ourselves," he said according to the state Bernama news agency.

"For instance, have we truly established an alternative system or are we still very much mimicking the established conventional system?"

Islamic law prohibits the payment and collection of interest, which is seen as a form of gambling, so highly complex instruments such as derivatives and other creative accounting practices are banned.

There have been calls for the conventional banking industry to take a leaf out of the book of Islamic finance, which also shuns investments in gaming, alcohol and pornography in favour of ethical investments.

Agencies

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Un says Gaza running out of food

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The UN relief and works agency has said it will run out of food within the next 48 hours as the blockade imposed on Gaza by Israel continues.

Christopher Gunness, the agency’s spokesman, told Al Jazeera the people in Gaza were being put through not just a "physical sense pf punishment but also a mental one".

"That’s how serious it is. We feed 750,000 people in Gaza and these are some of the poorest and most disadvantaged people in the Middle East," he said on Wednesday.

"Something very unusual is happening here. This is becoming a blockade against the UN itself."

The blockade, which has prevented deliveries of essential items including food and fuel, was imposed after rocket attacks by Palestinian fighters, who said they were responding to an Israeli raid that killed six people on November 4.

Gunness said the agency was trying to get material into a school for blind children but that it had been barred.

‘Blind Children’

"These blind children, as far as I am aware, are not firing rockets. And the material we are trying to get to them would make a pretty floppy rocket if they tried to make one from it," Gunness said.

"We have a situation where hundreds of thousands of ordinary people, including blind children who would have been assisted, are effectively being punished for the irresponsible acts of a few."

He added: "We condemn the firing of rockets. We do it every single time … We cannot punish whole communities. This has got to stop. The blockade against the UN itself has got to come to an end."

Gunness said a team in Gaza was starting a human rights education programme in the run up to the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights, but he added that it would be hard telling children to respect people’s rights.

"They are telling children in Gaza that they have to respect rights universally. How can we tell those same children, ‘Oh, by the way, you have to respect rights of people in Israel but they are actually stopping us giving you food?’ It doesn’t make sense," he said.

Gunness said the agency had made phone calls and sent emails seeking permission to deliver aid to Gazans, but it was getting no response

"We are told it is not possible … it is difficult … this stuff and the other. This sort of prevarication is leading to misery. A population is being radicalised in the Middle East," he said.

Renewed Deliveries

On Tuesday, Israel partially renewed fuel deliveries to the Gaza Strip, ending a week-long suspension of supplies that led to blackouts in the homes of Palestinian families.

Palestinian workers said the first delivery was received at the Nahal Oz fuel depot and was sent on to Gaza’s only power plant.

The plant shut down on Monday due to what Palestinian officials said was a lack of fuel, leaving about half of Gaza’s 1.5 million residents without power.

An Egyptian-brokered ceasefire that began in June has been disrupted following the imposition of the blockade.

Israeli’s foreign ministry accused Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, of exploiting the situation for political gain.

"The cynical Hamas exploitation of the civilian population in Gaza is contemptible," a ministry statement said.

Kanan Obeid, a Gazan energy official, criticised the move as an example of "Israel’s policy of collective punishment".

The Gaza City plant provides about a quarter of Gaza’s electricity, while most of the rest comes over lines from Israel. Egypt also provides a small amount.
 

(Aljazeera.net English and agencies)

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