At 7 a.m. on the day before the deadline for declaring his candidacy, Nur Misuari, chairman of the Moro National Liberation Front (M.N.L.F.), placed a call to Manila on the only long-distance phone in a town on the southern Philippine island of Jolo. Several minutes later, presidential troubleshooter Ruben Torres, the anxious man at the other end of the static-filled line, was digesting some bad news. The rebel leader, who is in the final stages of negotiating a peace agreement with the administration of President Fidel Ramos, had decided not to accept the invitation of the ruling party to become its candidate in the September election for Governor of the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao.

In a desperate, last-chance effort to persuade Misuari not to sacrifice such a historic opportunity for peace, Torres asked to speak to Misuari's military commanders. Summoned by courier from their camp 6 km away, the officers lined up in the telephone office to listen to the government's sales pitch one last time. When the call ended, Torres was not hopeful. He called an emergency meeting of the government's negotiating panel to discuss contingency plans.

Several hours later, Torres received another call from Misuari. To the surprise of just about everybody, he announced his readiness to rejoin the system he had fought for 24 years. He would run for--and almost certainly win--election as Governor of the autonomous region, which includes four predominantly Muslim provinces on the backward but resource-rich southern island of Mindanao.

Two weeks earlier, Misuari had agreed to a more significant deal: an overall peace pact that would end his Muslim insurgency. His deal with the government would establish a transitional body--chaired by him or one of his designees--to channel millions of dollars in development funds to those four provinces and 10 others on Mindanao. If all went well, there would be islandwide elections in three years. Both deals spelled victory for the President's policy of reconciliation with the Muslim rebels, which, he revealed to TIME last week (see the Interview on next page), was set in motion during his 1991 election campaign.

There was, however, one small problem. News that Misuari would have an official role in Mindanao's affairs triggered a vehement backlash from Christian residents of the island, who outnumber Muslims in most of the 14 provinces. In predominantly Christian Zamboanga City, the first stop on a swing through Mindanao by Ramos to promote the deal, crowds chanted, "We don't want Misuari." In General Santos City, where about half the residents are Christian, Ramos' convoy was pelted with tomatoes. Officials in Zamboanga del Norte flew the Philippine flag upside down to protest the agreement; Ramos threatened to prosecute them for sedition.

In the face of so much opposition, the President agreed to listen to complaints from the country's Roman Catholic bishops and a group of opposition political leaders and to conduct a belated public information campaign to support the deal. He left no doubt, however, that he is determined during the last two years of his term to end the long and bloody civil war that has cost the lives of 120,000 soldiers and civilians. "Isn't it better for Nur Misuari to come out of the jungle, cast away his uniform, lay aside his M-16 rifle and sit peacefully at the conference table with us in coat and tie?" asked Ramos at every stop. "The answer is clear."

Indeed, the government has wanted Misuari to run for Governor in order to help cleanse him quickly of his guerrilla image and to reintegrate him and his 30,000 followers into Philippine society. "As head of the autonomous region, he will be seen to have shifted from the paradigm of force through arms to economic development and peace," says Torres. If, after three years on the job, he can show that he has been successful in promoting development projects, Torres adds, "his example might be followed by the other Muslim groups and eventually even by the Christian population." Only then, the government believes, will the crime and terrorism that plague Mindanao be stemmed and will the Philippines' "wild west" begin to attract more foreign investors.

Torres knows something about the problems of reintegration. As a leftist student activist--and a close friend of Misuari's at the University of the Philippines in the late 1960s--Torres was jailed by the regime of President Ferdinand Marcos following the imposition of martial law in 1972. "I was only out in the cold for three years," says Torres, "and I had to relearn a lot. Nur has been out for 24 years, and in that time the whole country has changed." To cite just one example, he says, Misuari has not voted since 1969, when the country was on the verge of becoming a dictatorship.

Ramos spent much of last week trying to defuse the criticism and to consolidate support for the peace agreement, which he hopes to sign before the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in the Philippines in November. His style in seeking support for the deal was not always conciliatory. In the course of a series of dawn-to-midnight meetings with Mindanao politicians, Ramos conducted one particularly heated session for three leading opponents of the plan--all of them female legislators. Congresswoman Daisy Avance-Fuentes of General Santos City described a dinner meeting that was characterized by "long hours of sermon" from the President, during which guests were asked to "shut up" on the issue of Misuari's role in the transition body. "He was telling us if the government does not set up this council, there will be war," reported Fuentes afterward. "He virtually laid the blood on our feet and made us responsible for deaths should a war ensue, calling us agitators."

Such bluntness does not endear Ramos to many of his fellow Christians, who fear the political integration that the deal portends. The most avid supporters of the peace plan are the Philippine military generals who helped negotiate it under the aegis of the Organization of Islamic Conference, a 56-member body based in Saudi Arabia. Negotiator Eduwardo Ermita, a former general, whose growing closeness to Misuari has earned him the sobriquet "the Congressman from the M.N.L.F.," offers a simple explanation: "Our superiors give us a mission, and we accomplish it. What is our objective? Peace. Why are we negotiating? Because peace has not been achieved. How do we achieve peace? By looking for the cause of the trouble, the M.N.L.F. Who is its leader? Nur Misuari."

--With reporting by Nelly Sindayen/Manila