REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, MANILA - The president of the overwhelmingly Catholic Philippines proposed Wednesday to give Muslims in the south the ability to run their own government under their own flag, part of a peace plan aimed at ending a four-decade rebellion that has killed 150,000 people.

The draft law submitted to Congress fleshes out a peace deal signed in March by the country's largest Muslim insurgent group, the 11,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). The autonomous region in the southern island of Mindanao, to be called Bangsamoro, would get its own 60-member parliament that would wield exclusive power over such areas as agriculture, trade, tourism and education.

Under the proposal, Islamic Shariah law would apply to Muslims, but the country's justice system would continue to apply to non-Muslims — in contrast with the Islamic State group, which is imposing Shariah law on areas they control in Syria and Iraq.

President Benigno Aquino III's government also has promised to pour 17 billion pesos (389 million USD) in special development funds over the next five years into the region, which has been stunted economically due to the conflict.