I have misgivings, still about Minister Ali Treki. He changed some of the provisions of the agreement when we were not looking. I hope these are only instances of oversight not malicious attempts at foisting a humiliating and one sided agreement on us.
It may be necessary to still take a hard-bargaining stand in the Feb. 3-Mar. 5, 1977 conference on the details.
Thus the subordination of the special regional or security units to the “Central security units” is left to be agreed upon. The original agreement was that any regional security unit would have to be subordinated, of course, to AFP [Armed Forces of the Philippines] command channels. This disappeared.
And the last numbered paragraph (No. 16) makes it sound like it is the obligation of the government of the Philippines to make the constitution conform to the agreement. The intent, of course, was that the Constitution be not violated.
The agreement sounds like a bill of obligations of the Government of the Philippines.
But it attains peace. And this is our goal!
The agreement is badly written. It has grievous grammatical errors—Hardheaded sensitive Arabs! It is not even a consistent statement of principles. It occasionally breaks out into inconsistent details.
But by and large in the Philippines have given them what we were ready to give in the first place, without the intervention of Pres. Ghadafy. He and Minister Ali Al Treki must be congratulating themselves as they got the autonomy they have always wanted.
However, it is the kind of limited autonomy we were or I was going to give the regions anyway.
Probably, though, we should give the Muslim region autonomy of this kind first, to make it look all the more like a concession to them. Then I will grant it to the rest of the country.
This should make them happier.
No Official Gazette entry for this day.