August 5, 2012 News: The forthcoming 30th GPH-MILF Exploratory Talks in Kuala Lumpur will most likely determine the course of the 15-year peace-making in Mindanao whether there will be signing or it continues to drag for years.

This was the bold prediction of Datu Antonio Kinoc, alternate member of the MILF peace panel, who hails from Davao del Sur and representing the indigenous peoples in Mindanao.

He admitted that while there was a “modest breakthrough” during the last meeting in Kuala Lumpur last July 6-8, the chances of forging an agreement soon are still hanging in the balance.

“In a negotiation, anything can still happen,” he confessed.

Asked to shed details of the agreed points in the recent talks, he merely shrugged off his shoulders: “Ask my Chairman in the peace panel. I have no authority to say anything about that. What I know there was no signed document, except the joint statement.”

Meanwhile, in the OPAPP’s website, Dean Marvic Leonen, chair of the GPH peace panel, had these to describe the current status of the negotiation: “We are aware that we are now approaching the cusp of history,” without failing to state that for a centuries-old conflict and years of negotiations, we definitely will face the hardest questions and confront our principals with the hardest decisions yet ever to be made in these negotiations.”

He added that both parties have accomplished “something which the GPH and the MILF have never achieved before in these talks. These agreements may be in principle, some in detail.”

The two parties are scheduled to meet in Kuala Lumpur soon. However, no final date has been set. This will be communicated by the Malaysian facilitator as soon as dates are firmed up for the next round of meeting.

Expected to be part of the agenda are power-sharing, wealth-sharing, territory, the MILF “political detainees”, which to the MILF is a continuing agenda; meaning, it will part of the agenda every time the two parties meet.