Leonen told a press conference in Quezon City on February 7, that they received reports about Kato setting up the BIFF and “have monitored this development for the past months.” He said they “raised this as a concern with the MILF panel during our informal talks” on January 13.
In his opening statement at the exploratory talks on February 9, Iqbal admitted that the MILF has problems and Kato “is one of those problems” but added that the MILF leadership is “still hopeful that we can manage and solve this problem; otherwise, we will tell the government, the facilitator, and the international community that he has already burned his bridges with the MILF, he is not one of us, he is not with the MILF.”
“To be frank with all of you here, Kato is indeed a problem,” said Iqbal. But he added: “if we are truthful to ourselves and to the facts surrounding why he had been a problem is because of the betrayal of the previous administration (not its peace panel) in not signing the Memorandum of Agreement of Ancestral Domain on August 5, 2008.“
Earlier, Iqbal told MinadNews that Kato “resigned as commander of the 105th, formed the BIFF” which he described as a “separate military command but still with the MILF.”
He said Kato has a “very small” group, about a thousand “both armed and unarmed.” He said Kato has “around 100 armed” followers.
Iqbal said Kato was later reassigned to Dawa’h, a religious unit of the MILF Central Committee.||| |||buy lasix online with |||
He explained that the BIFF has not made any military move against government forces during the last seven months and he does not expect the group to make any disruption during the peace talks.
MILF chair Al Haj Murad Ebrahim in a press conference on February 5 in the MILF camp in Darapanan, Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao, said he was “full of hope” that talks “will lead towards the forging of a comprehensive compact agreement.||| |||buy biaxin online with |||
