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COTABATO CITY (MindaNews / 18 March) – The chair of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) peace panel today said some sectors and politicians have been making mountains out of a mole.
With this statement, Mohagher Iqbal stressed he was a Filipino with a Philippine passport.
He was apparently replying to insinuations by former Interior and Local Government Secretary Rafael Alunan III that he and MILF Chair Al-Hajj Murad Ebrahim are holding Malaysian passports.
Iqbal told MindaNews that he and Murad both have Philippine passports. He showed his passport with his photograph on it, but covered his legal name, apparently for security reasons.
“I only have one passport; I am not Malaysian,” Iqbal stressed, noting that some sectors just wanted to discredit the MILF peace panel.
“We travel with our counterpart in the Philippine peace panel so they know my passport is issued in the Philippines,” he added.
“We are not hiding anything, we are partners in the negotiation,” Iqbal pointed out.
“In fact, the Malaysian embassy has issued a statement declaring I and Chairman Murad are not Malaysian citizens,” Iqbal said.
He added that the Philippine government, through the peace panels, knows the details of the MILF peace panels’ foreign travels.
