No truce, no Oslo venue, but talks with NDF still on

Communist rebels are unlikely to sign a ceasefire with the Philippine government ahead of scheduled peace talks later this month, officials of both sides said yesterday.

"(The ceasefire) is not a precondition to the start of the talks," National Security Adviser Roilo Golez told reporters.

"Nobody has offered anything to anybody," Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Eduardo Ermita added.

In the Netherlands, Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Ma. Sison said a hasty truce would bring more problems. He said "mutual ceasefires of limited scope of time and place for specific purposes" were sufficient for the time being.

"It is of crucial importance that peace negotiations first address the roots of the civil war before there can be an end to armed hostilities," Sison said.

Government negotiators denied offering a joint nationwide ceasefire to the communist National Democratic Front (NDF), saying nothing final has been agreed on by the peace pa-nels.

The denial came following reports that the government had apparently been humiliated by the NDF’s rejection of its offer.

"There’s nothing to reject because there was no offer made," said chief government negotiator Silvestre Bello III, who also denied that Norway’s capital of Oslo had been chosen as the venue for the resumption of peace talks on April 27.

"The matter of venue is still to be decided by the President. We agreed between panels but the question of the venue will still have to be finalized," Bello said.

Earlier, the Department of Foreign Affairs sent a formal request to the Norwegian Embassy for Oslo to host the peace talks that have been stalled since the ratification of the Visiting Forces Agreement between Manila and Washington in May 1999.

Bello’s denial was in stark contrast to his pronouncements last week where he said the Cabinet Cluster E approved the proposal of the government panel that it offer a nationwide ceasefire to the NDF.

"What the government wants is to have a nationwide ceasefire. Our intention is to urge the NDF to agree to a bilateral ceasefire for the entire period of negotiations. We are going to discuss this with our counterparts right after Holy Week," he earlier said.

NDF chief negotiator Luis Jalandoni last week said the proposal will still have to be evaluated by the NDF executive committee in the Netherlands headed by Sison, the Communist Party of the Philippines founding chairman.

Jalandoni and former newsman Antonio Zumel arrived with their respective spouses last weekend for exploratory talks prior to the formal resumption of the peace dialogue preferably in a "foreign neutral venue."

Jalandoni also earlier said that the NDF had made arrangements with the Norwegian government that Oslo be the venue of the resumption of talks on April 27.

The government and the New People’s Army (NPA), the NDF’s armed wing, separately declared a limited ceasefire in the Southern Tagalog region until April 12 to pave the way for the release of Army Maj. Noel Buan.

After more 21 months in captivity, Buan was finally released April 6. As a measure of goodwill, the government also freed several dozen jailed communist rebels.

Suggestions for a nationwide ceasefire soon followed with the Southern Tagalog pact about to run out.

But Sison on Thursday flat out rejected the government’s offer, saying accepting the proposal would be tantamount to the "pacification of revolutionary forces" by the Arroyo administration.

He stressed there was a difference between pacification and the search for a just and lasting peace.

"The NDF cannot accept pacification and surrender in any manner or form. It cannot be pushed by any hype or attempt to convert the peace negotiations into a scheme of pacifying the revolutionary force ... forgetting about the (rebels’) social, economic and political demands," Sison said from his base in Utrecht.

Bello, a former justice secretary and solicitor general, was reportedly scolded by Ermita for issuing statements prematurely.

For his part, Ermita said the Cabinet Cluster E has set another meeting on April 20 to finalize the details of the resumption of talks to end the 32-year-old rebellion.

The NPA has an estimated 11,500 members. –With Paolo Romero