Thai military studies Manila-MILF deal

BANGKOK, March 28 (TNA) - The Thai military is studying a peace deal between the Philippine government and the rebellious Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to be a model for Thai security authorities' attempts to restore peace in the Thai far South. Colonel Banphote Poolpian, Spokesman of the Internal Security Operations Command, told journalists on Friday that Thai Army Chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha expressed his interest in the Philippine government-MILFpeace deal during a meeting of the Army Operations Center in Bangkok earlier in the day and assigned relevant officers to study the matter to support the Thai government’s future solutions to security problems in the violence-plagued Thai deep South. According to the spokesman, the Philippines has taken almost 45 years to solve its insurgency problem, during which about 120,000 people were killed, and the peace process began in 2001 with 43 rounds of negotiations over the past 13 years, before the Philippine Parliament legalized the peace process. The spokesman noted that the Philippine government started its peace restoration attempts with the country's biggest insurgency movement, not with minor insurgency and hardcore groups in the southern part of the country, while the peace process in the Thai deep South has just marked its first anniversary and there has only been three rounds of talks so far. (TNA)