The Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) remains confident of gaining an observer status in the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) even in the wake of the unity of ranks of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

GRP special envoy to the OIC, Ambassador Rafael Seguis, stressed this clearly in an exclusive interview Wednesday with the Manila Bulletin, saying OIC Secretary General Prof. Ekmeleddin Ihsanuglo has made a commitment to grant it.

Seguis, also the chairman of the GRP peace panel in the peace talks with the MILF, said many OIC member-states have also pledged their support to the Philippine cause.

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) official hastened to add that GRP does not seek to supplant the MNLF, which has a permanent observer status in the pan-Islamic body since 1977.

"We are applying as a sovereign state," said Seguis. He said earlier that having an observer status for the Philippines will benefit Muslims in the country. But he disagreed with the suggestion that the unity of the two Muslim groups could prevent GRP's six years old OIC bid for a permanent observer seat.

Maulana "Bobby" Alonto, an MILF peace panel member and one of MILF Chairman Al-Hajji Murad Ebrahim's companions at the 37th Session of the OIC's Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) on May 18 to 20 in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, wrote a report of the MILF-MNLF unity meeting.

Alonto did not say it in the report, though, but it gave birth to a suggestion that an MNLF-MILF unity could be the foil to GRP's bid.

"That is absurd," Seguis said, adding that he does not believe that MNLF-MILF unity would prevent the OIC from approving GRP's application.

He added the OIC bid of GRP is pending only because of the still unfinished new guidelines for granting observer status as required by the new Charter of the OIC approved in 2008.

Ihsanuglo officially invited the MILF to the Dushanbe OIC-CFM and also engineered unity talks between the MILF and the MNLF at the sidelines of the foreign ministers' meeting.

In his report of the meeting unclassified by the MILF, Alonto said, among others, "if the Philippine government succeeds in attaining observer status, the likelihood that it would replace the MNLF or Moro representation in that body for that matter, which enjoys such as status, would be great."

The MILF leader cited the situation of Muslims in Southern Thailand, "who are deprived of a voice in the OIC" because Thailand herself has an OIC observer status since 1998. He also mentioned the case of Chechnya Muslims who are also deprived of representation because the Russian Federation got an observer status in 2005.

In another part of his report, Alonto cited the "great risk" of the Muslim representation in the OIC being lost to GRP because of the MNLF's fragmentation into several factions.

He said it was the MILF that proposed in 2009 the two groups' unity that would include sectors of the Bangsamoro people. "This concept as proposed by the MILF brings Moro unity and representation in the international community, particularlyto the OIC, to the level of a nation – the Bangsamoro nation," said Alonto.

He added that Ihsanuglo "was hard pressed by the persistent lobbying of the Philippine government OIC member-states for an observer seat in the OIC."