By John Unson in Mindanao Cross

COTABATO CITY – The Organization of Islamic Cooperation will convene on October 13 in Manila the representatives of the rivals Moro National Liberation Front and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front to the Bangsamoro Coordinating Forum (BCF), a senior MNLF leader said.

The BCF was organized last June by the OIC, a bloc of more than 50 Muslim states, including petroleum-exporting nations in the Middle East and North Africa, as a venue for cooperation, between the MNLF and the MILF, in pushing the Mindanao peace process forward.

Former Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema, chair of the largest of three MNLF groups, said Syed El-Masry, a representative of the Egyptian government, will preside the forthcoming BCF meeting.

Egypt is among a dozen countries, which include Libya, Indonesia, Senegal, Turkey, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia, that comprise the OIC’s Southern Philippines Peace Committee.

The committee monitors the situation of Moro communities in areas covered by the September 2, 1996 government-MNLF peace agreement.

El-Masry is expected to arrive in the country two days before the October 13 BCF meeting.

“The MILF is an indispensable component of the BCF,” Sema said.

The MILF’s leader, Al-Haj Murad, was a signatory to a document detailing the creation and membership of the BCF, crafted during a meeting abroad last June.

“We look forward to a good meeting, where we in the MNLF and our brothers in the MILF can possibly `harmonize” our diverse positions on how to solve this decades-old Mindanao Moro issue,” Sema said.

Sema’s group, whose members are scattered in more than 20 “revolutionary states” in Mindanao, is not hostile to the MILF.

The MNLF faction led by Nur Misuari, now wanted in connection with the deadly September 2013 uprising by his followers in Zamboanga City, is opposed to the efforts of the government and the MILF to establish a Bangsamoro government, through the draft Basic Bangsamoro Law, now being deliberated by Congress.

The firebrand Misuari had said the reference for the proposed law, the Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro, signed on March 27, 2014 in Malacañang by government chief negotiator Miriam Coronel-Ferrer and her MILF counterpart, Mohagher Iqbal, rendered useless the 1996 GPH-MNLF truce, which the OIC brokered.

Sema said they are optimistic the MILF will participate in the BCF meeting in Manila next month.

Sema said about 90 percent of the 42 “consensus points” reached in the review of the GPH-MNLF peace pact, via a three-way process involving representatives of the OIC and Malacañang, are stated in the CAB and the draft BBL.

The still unfinished review of the now 17-year GPH-MNLF peace accord, which started in 2007, was prompted by misunderstandings by both sides on the implementation of some of its sensitive provisions.