KUALA LUMPUR: A team of Indonesian peace monitors arrived in the Philippines on Sunday as part of an international mission to ensure a ceasefire between the Philippines government and a Muslim militant group in the southern part of the country is upheld. The peace deal between the militant group MILF and the country's security forces had been reached earlier this year, and the international team of monitors is tasked with maintaining what has been a tense ceasefire. Reports from Indonesia's foreign ministry said their team consisted of 10 military officials and five civilian experts on conflict prevention, and were deployed upon the request of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the government. The group is the newest foreign contingent to join the mission, which consists of about 40 others from Malaysia, Brunei, Japan, Libya and the European Union. “Their arrival is an assurance that the ceasefire is seriously in place,” the government's chief peace adviser Teresita Deles told reporters. Deles said the 12,000-strong MILF and the government were aiming to sign a peace deal by the end of the year, following a breakthrough agreement in April in which both sides committed to create a new autonomous political region in the troubled south. “We are expanding common grounds and we are both looking for ways on how to close distances on the most contentious issues,” she said. “There are certainly signs that the two sides are moving towards addressing each other's concerns.” “We are officially cautiously optimistic,” Deles said when asked whether a final peace deal would be signed this year. The MILF has waged a rebellion for more than three decades, originally for the establishment of an independent state in Mindanao, the southern third of the mainly Catholic Philippines.
