As
attempts to find a diplomatic solution to the problems between the
Philippines and Malaysia were flagging, on Aug. 26, 1973 President
Ferdinand Marcos told US Ambassador William Sullivan that the key to a
peaceful solution in the Sulu archipelago lay with Sabah’s Chief
Minister Tun Mustapha, and he was seeking a deal with him both directly
and through the talks brokered by Indonesia.
Marcos said he had told
Mustapha that if he stopped interfering in Sulu he would withdraw the
Sabah claim — and if Mustapha wanted independence for Sabah (which, as
we will see, he did from time to time espouse), he would, through the
trilateral talks, support that. Marcos blamed the lack of progress of
the talks after Hong Kong on Malaysia’s Ghazali, who he described as a
“picador,” and the perceptive Sullivan expressed the view that Marcos’s
offer of support for Sabah independence might be intended as a counter
to the Malaysian’s “pics.”
But the search for a diplomatic solution
seemed dead in the water, and by mid-September Indonesian Foreign
Minister Adam Malik said that he had, due to the lack of progress, opted
out of the role as intermediary. According to him, the best hope was
for the Philippines and Malaysia to “keep quiet on the subject” of
Sabah. A month later, he told US Ambassador Francis Galbraith that
Marcos had agreed to “eliminate” the Philippine claim to Sabah but that
Malaysian Prime Minister Razak had failed to respond and so there “is
nothing more I can do.”
If the apparent absence of relevant cable
traffic over the next few months is any guide, the Philippines and
Malaysia did indeed “keep quiet on the subject,” but then on March 5,
1974 Marcos told Sullivan of “disturbing intelligence which tied
Malaysia directly into training, supplying and organizing
anti-government forces in Mindanao and Sulu.” Moreover, Marcos said he
was convinced that Razak was involved. He praised the mediation efforts
of Indonesia’s Suharto and Malik and suspected that Malaysia “had
frustrated these efforts and is playing some larger game with Libya and
the Arab states.”
Marcos’s fear was that Malaysia would attempt to
rally the Arab oil-producers against the Philippines at the Islamic
Conference due to convene in Kuala Lumpur in May, and so he was
attempting through Suharto to arrange a meeting with Malaysian Prime
Minister Razak and Tun Mustapha before that date. He was prepared to
drop the Philippine claim to Sabah, but if Razak sought the detachment
of the Sulus from the Philippines “or some larger scheme,” this could be
“explosive.”
During the visit to Manila of Saudi Minister of State
Omar Saqqaf just over a week later, Marcos wooed him on oil security and
the Southern Philippines, advising him that “ancestral lands currently
occupied by Muslims would be set aside for exclusive ownership of Muslim
communities.” Malaysia attempted to counter these attempts, but Saqqaf
refused to meet its ambassador. He vowed Saudi commitment to assisting
the Philippines to reach a solution in the south and to the provision of
substantial financial assistance after hostilities had ceased.
Sullivan
thought that Marcos had probably “clinched the case by showing Saqqaf
excerpts” from the document allegedly providing proof of Malaysian
support of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). The document,
which was leaked to Associated Press correspondent Arnold Zeitlin,
claimed to demonstrate that: since 1969 Malaysia had trained MNLF
members, including chairman Nur Misuari, at various sites in Malaysia;
since December 1972 there had been at least 58 landings during which the
MNLF had received at least 200,000 rounds of ammunition and 5,407
weapons, the last shipment being delivered by two Malaysian naval
vessels on Dec. 31, 1973; and that according to an intercepted letter,
Tun Mustapha had provided P750,000 (then worth $112,500) to MNLF
leaders.
This provoked the US Embassy in Kuala Lumpur to seek the
Malaysian view of these allegations. Responding to such an advance, on
March 21, Secretary-General Zaiton of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs
made an extended presentation to the Ambassador in which he asserted
that the Muslim problem in the Southern Philippines was deep-rooted and
internal, and one which could only be solved by Filipinos. Neither the
Malaysian government nor Sabah’s Tun Mustapha was involved. For both
domestic and regional reasons, Malaysia wanted peace, because violence
was disruptive.
On the other hand, many Sabahans had family and
friendship ties in the Sulu archipelago and there was considerable
popular sympathy for the plight of Filipino Muslims. Then again, the
Philippine claim to Sabah caused “suspicion and antipathy,” and the
Jabidah incident of 1968, when Marcos had been training a unit to be
used in the taking of Sabah, was fresh in Malaysians’ memories. Even so,
Malaysia, far from attempting to orchestrate Muslim state sanctions
against the Philippines, had argued against Libyan “punitive proposals.”
Even
now, Zaiton pointed out, the Philippines had made no official statement
alleging Malaysian interference. Both governments had agreed to “let
sleeping dogs lie,” and work through Asean for regional cooperation. The
bottom line was that Malaysia would never accept the linking of the
Sabah and Southern Philippines issues as this would imply that it was
responsible for the problems of the latter.
The Ambassador was of the
view that this was a “highly professional presentation, of clean hands
and good intentions, and as far as it went, truthful.” He said, however,
that the remarks on the sympathy of Sabah residents implied “that some
people in private capacity might be providing tangible evidence of their
sympathy, but that even if they were,” it did not add significantly to
Manila’s problem.
Was this view naive? We’ll see next week.
source: Tribune by Ken Fuller
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