Philippine president, rebels agree on autonomy bill

MANILA, Sep 8 (agencies): A Philippine official says the president discreetly met with a Muslim rebel leader last week in Manila and both helped untangle thorny differences over a proposed autonomy law they hope will end decades of bloody rebellion in the south.
Presidential adviser Teresita Deles said Monday that President Benigno Aquino III and Al Haj Murad Ebrahim of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front endorsed a draft of the law at an unannounced meeting last Thursday at the presidential palace. The draft will be submitted to Congress this week.
 After years of Malaysian-brokered negotiations, the government and the 11,000-strong Muslim rebel group, the largest in the south, signed in March a peace deal to establish a more powerful and potentially larger Muslim autonomous region.
 Differences, however, threatened to stall the autonomy legislation's drafting.
Meanwhile: President Benigno Aquino will seek European support for Philippine efforts to resolve maritime territorial disputes with China during a week-long visit to EU nations including France and Germany, a foreign ministry official said Monday.
Aquino will also raise his proposal to stop China from further escalating tensions in the strategically-vital South China Sea, assistant foreign secretary Zeneida Collinson said.
"In all the meetings starting with Spain, we will seek their continued support on the Philippine position in the West Philippine Sea," she told reporters, using the local term for the South China Sea.
"It's important for our president to have the opportunity to apprise these world leaders directly on what is happening in... the South China Sea," when he visits Spain, Belgium, France and Germany from September 13 to 20, she said.
Such support can be "tacit" and did not need to be contained in a formal document, she added.
China claims almost all of the South China Sea, a vital shipping lane and fishing ground that is believed to hold vast mineral resources.
This conflicts with the territorial claims of the Philippines as well as Brunei, Malaysia, Taiwan and Vietnam.
In recent years, tensions between the Philippines and China have risen as Beijing has aggressively pressed its claim, citing "historical facts" and occupying and fortifying outcrops and islets.