MANILA, Jan 29 — Philippine President Benigno Aquino blamed a lack of coordination for a deadly clash between Muslim rebels and police as he sought to hold together a peace accord in the country’s south.

In a televised speech yesterday after the Jan 25 deaths of 44 police commandos in Maguindanao province, Aquino cited poor coordination with key agencies including the military. The elite cops were killed in a pre-dawn clash with Muslim rebels while searching for a Malaysian bomb expert on the US list of most-wanted terrorists.

“I can’t accuse a group without evidence,” Aquino said in a later briefing from the presidential palace in Manila when asked if it was acceptable for Moro Islamic Liberation Front fighters to have opened fire because police did not inform them about the raid.

“What I’m sure of is we can count on the MILF to help achieve justice.”

Aquino signed a pact with the 11,000-strong MILF in March to end a four-decade insurgency in Mindanao that has killed as many as 200,000 people and thwarted efforts to unlock investment in the mineral-rich south. A bill to enforce the peace accord by setting up a new Muslim autonomous region with more powers and wealth is at risk after at least two senators withdrew their support.

The Moro Islamic leadership has started its own probe of the clash, Ghadzali Jaafar, the group’s vice chairman for political affairs, said Thursday by phone from Maguindanao.

“We still believe that the best way to address the problem is through negotiations,” he said, adding that a Friday meeting between MILF and Philippine government officials in Kuala Lumpur will go ahead.

‘Provocative Rhetoric’

The bodies of the policemen arrived today at Villamor Airbase in Pasay City near the capital, where Interior Secretary Mar Roxas led ceremonies to honor them.

“Aquino is trying to make sure hard-liners who were behind the recent ambush will not scuttle what seems to be a historic opportunity to end the Mindanao conflict for good,” Richard Javad Heydarian, a political science professor at De La Salle University, said by phone.

“By not engaging in provocative rhetoric and refusing to escalate tensions he is reaching out to the MILF top brass and empowering moderates to overcome internal divisions and stick to the peace process.”

Terror Suspects

“If the peace process were derailed, how many more graves would we have to dig?” Aquino said in his televised speech.

“How many more children will idolize the likes of Marwan and how many more would want want to become like Usman?” he said, referring to Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli Hir—known as Marwan—and Filipino suspect Abdul Basit Usman, both targets of the police raid.

Bin Hir has a US$5 million (RM 18.178 million) bounty on his head, while Usman is wanted in exchange for US$1 million.

Hir was “allegedly killed” in the operation, Aquino said. He didn’t provide information about Usman.

Aquino said the head of the armed forces’ Western Mindanao Command had not been advised of the mission until the police were in danger.

The raid was a “continuing operation” against suspected terrorists, he said when asked who gave the go-signal. The president said he didn’t know why Roxas had not been informed of the plan.

The police operation targeted a town inhabited by MILF fighters and members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, a splinter group, Roxas said at a briefing on Jan. 26.

“Even if the MILF and BIFF now constitute two different groups, many of them are related by blood or by affinity,” Aquino said in his speech.

Earlier yesterday, Senate President Franklin Drilon urged the Moro Islamic leadership to surrender their fighters as an “act of goodwill”.

Turning over the gunmen involved in the clash will “without a shadow of a doubt prove the MILF’s sincerity and support to the government’s peace and development program,” Drilon said in a statement.

Police Morale

A group of retired and active-duty military and police generals condemned the killings as a “barbaric massacre that cannot be justified even under the current protocols of the peace process.” The group in an e-mailed statement called on the government to examine the security implications of any final peace agreement with the rebel group.

“The morale of the police and military is at stake,” Ramon Casiple, executive director of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform in Manila, said by phone before Aquino’s address. “It’s difficult to wave the flag of peace under this atmosphere. The trust and confidence has been lost.”

The Muslim rebels acted in self-defense, Moro Islamic chief peace negotiator Mohagher Iqbal told reporters in a teleconference from Cotabato city Monday, adding that police had not coordinated the operation with his group’s cease-fire committee. — Bloomberg