Lawmaker Miriam Santiago praises Aquino's sober treatment of Sabah issue

Malaysian police officers patrol near a village about 130 kilometers from Lahad Datu in Sabah, where followers of Sulu Sultan Jamalul Kiram III remain holed up after defying an order to leave. AP 

Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago on Friday welcomed President Aquino's move to take a sober and restrained action on the standoff in Sabah to protect the peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

"We do not want to aggravate our neighbor, on what we call in international law, who are offering their good offices to solve our so-called Mindanao problem," she said.

"We do not want to take any step that could be interpreted as an act of not really aggression, but an act of provocation. You know, in diplomacy, we have to be extremely careful with our language. And that is what the country is doing," Santiago said.

She noted that no state wants to stage a minor warfare with another country. "It's from a cost-analysis point of view. It is not just worth the cost," Santiago said.

Informed that the Malaysian forces have attacked the royal army of the Sultanate of Sulu holed up in Lahad Datu in Sabah, Santiago said the government should be careful on threading on a foreign policy issue.

"Then we have to verify that if they have been acting on self defense. We don't really know," she said after attending the Go Negosyo's 5th Filipina Entrepreneurship Summit on Friday at the World Trade Center in Pasay City.

"We cannot really make announcements on foreign policy issues. Foreign policy issues are very, very tricky. We have to be extremely careful and that is what the Aquino administration is doing," Santiago said.

Santiago, former chairperson of the Senate committee on foreign relations, welcomed President Aquino's move to "not immediately jump on the bandwagon."

"It has taken full patience as a guideline in the propaganda concerning this controversy. I think that is a good diplomatic move," she said.

"The Aquino administration appears not to be at all hospitable to the claims of the Sultan of Sulu because even our government is not fully acquainted with the historical details of the claim. I think it is all a tempest in the teapot," Santiago added.

Santiago supported the move of President Aquino in dealing with the crisis.

"The management of this controversy has been very sober and has emphasized the democratic rather the other aspects, particularly the martial aspects of this controversy," she said.

"It is correct for the PNoy administration to adopt this restraint stance because otherwise we have to go to the International Court of Justice, which is the final tribunal for territorial disputes and that can take decades and decades," Santiago added.

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More than 10 Dead RSA Sulu Sultanate and Malaysias War in Sabah

A Philippine policeman stands guard near the Malaysian embassy in Manila after Malaysian authorities ended the Sabah stand-off with Filipino gunmen. (AFP PHOTO/TED ALJIBE) 

More than 10 unconfirmed dead  from Royal Sulu Army and confirmed 3 , including two police officers, were killed on Friday as Malaysian security forces reported in the clash between Malaysian security forces and the Royal Security group of the Sulu Sultanate crowned prince Rajah Mudah Agbimuddin Kiram this afternoon after the exchange of gunfire in Tanduo village.

Although officially unconfirmed, the reported casualty tally remains at more than ten Sulu gunmen dead and four injured including its leader Rajah Mudah Azzimudie Kiram with two commandos of the General Operations Force dead and four injured.

Three of the GOF injured men have been airlifted to Lahad Datu hospital and another to the Duchess of Kent hospital in Sandakan.

Conflicting reports emerged from the ground that the GOF forces were holding their fire and their positions while there has been no word from Azzumudie who last talked with a radio station in Manila at about 11am confirming the fire fight and the group's casualties.

It is believed that apart from machine gunfire, mortars were used during the encounter though details of how the clash began remains unclear.

However, it appears that the Malaysian security forces were fired upon first by the Sulu gunmen.

On standby are also the Army units who were seen at various strategic locations along the road to Sahabat Felda 17 where the Sulu group have been holed up.

Journalists have been told to wait at a neighboring Sahabat 16 resort for a police press conference scheduled for 5pm.

Dozens of followers of the little-known sultan of Sulu had been facing off with Malaysian police for the past two weeks, after they sailed from their homes in the southern Philippines to stake a territorial claim in North Borneo.

The 74-year-old Sultan Jamalul Kiram III says he is the head of the Islamic Sultanate of Sulu, which once controlled parts of Borneo including the site of the stand-off, as well as southern Philippine islands.

The owner of the house where the leader of the gunmen stayed during the 17-day stand-off was also killed but the nationality was not known, Philippine foreign department spokesman Raul Hernandez told reporters, citing a report by Malaysia's ambassador.

A third Malaysian police officer was wounded after the gunmen opened fire on their van, he said.

"The Malaysian ambassador said that the rest of the Kiram group in Lahad Datu escaped and ran toward the sea," he said, adding that 10 members of the group were arrested.

Malaysia's state news agency Bernama reported that two police commandos had been killed in a mortar shell explosion as they patrolled around the village where the gunmen were holed up.

It was unclear if they were the two police officers mentioned by Hernandez.

An official at the main hospital in the town of Lahad Datu near the site of the stand-off told AFP two police officers had been brought in with gunshot wounds but were in stable condition.

Hernandez said he could not confirm allegations by a Manila spokesman for the gunmen that Malaysian security forces had shot dead 10 members of the group and wounded four others.

Hernandez said Manila had formally demanded a full account of the security operation that ended the stand-off.

Kiram's spokesman Abraham Idjirani claimed Malaysian snipers had killed 10 of the sultan's men and wounded four other members of the group.

"I talked to (the group's leader) by telephone just now and asked him how many of his men were martyred. He told me 10. I enquired about the wounded and he said four," Idjirani told a news conference at Kiram's Manila home.

Idjirani insisted Kiram's men would continue to fight and would not leave Sabah.

The Islamic Sultanate of Sulu leased northern Borneo to Europeans in the 1870s.

While the sultanate's authority gradually faded as Western colonial powers exerted their influence over the region, it continued to receive lease payments for Sabah.

The former British colony became part of the federation of Malaysia when it was formed in 1963.

Kiram and the other heirs of the sultan still receive nominal annual compensation from Malaysia in the equivalent of about $1,700.

Idjirani suggested last week that the men would stand down if the compensation were substantially raised.

With report from the Star Malaysia and Channel News Asia

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