Excellencies;
Secretary Dureza;
Colleagues and Friends:

Our presence this afternoon demonstrates our sustained commitment to peace and brotherhood.

Drawn together by our shared aspirations of achieving honorable and lasting peace in the Southern Philippines, we are further consolidating the gains of peacebuilding as we seek to realize the promise of progress and development for all Muslim Filipinos.

Bound by our deeply held faith and bolstered by our trust, confidence and respect for each other, we are planting – and nurturing – the seeds of peace and progress in Mindanao.

And we are showing significant progress.

With the abiding support of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the members of the Committee of the Eight and our partners in the region and friends in the Islamic umma, our peace and development efforts have taken root and are growing on fertile ground.

The QIC and its member-states were instrumental in the signing of the historic peace agreement between the GRP and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) in 1996.   Today, you continue to be our vital and active partners in the full transformation of Mindanao.

I thank each one of you.  I thank the QIC and the members of the Committee of the Eight for accepting our invitation to visit Mindanao.

This visit is an important opportunity to see how far we have gone together in our journey towards peace and progress through the comprehensive implementation of Phase 2 of the GRP-MNLF Peace Agreement. This as much was recognized by His Excellency Secretary General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu in our meeting in Jeddah last year at the sidelines of the Third Extraordinary Islamic Summit.

Likewise, the visit to Southern Philippines is intended to show how the Philippine Government is protecting the local environment and effectively addressing other concerns.

Of course, this visit also affords the OIC and the Committee of the Eight the chance to witness one other significant fruit of the peace process: the increased interaction and cooperation between and among the Mindanao stakeholders through meaningful dialogue.

In the spirit of solidarity and brotherhood - strengthened through years of cooperation - we are confident that the frontiers of peace and development in Mindanao will be further broadened.

Together with the OIC and our partners in the community of nations, we will continue to do more for peace, for all Muslim Filipinos, and for all of Mindanao's stakeholders.

Thank you and good afternoon.  END