Gov’t-NDF talks in Oslo bog down

OSLO, Norway — Presidential adviser on the peace process Teresita Quintos Deles, head of the Philippine government delegation to the peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front (NDF), declared here yesterday that the peace talks "have bogged down."

The talks which started Tuesday failed to get off the ground from Day 1, she said.

"We are in a difficult stage. The talks have bogged down from the first day up to this morning," Deles said yesterday. "We are seeking a third party facilitator, the Norwegian government to propose measures or suggestions to break the impasse."

The peace talks in Norway are aimed at ending a decades-old communist insurgency in the Philippines.

However, Deles said that the NDF has refused to continue with the talks unless the government panel agrees to put pressure on Washington and other Western allies to drop the insurgents from a blacklist of "foreign terrorist organizations" (FTO).

"It is beyond our jurisdiction," Deles said, insisting that the terrorist tag on the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army (CPP-NPA) and its founder Jose Ma. Sison, is not in the hands of the government alone.

The terrorist tag, imposed after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks in the US, has reportedly dried up the rebels’ foreign fund sources, reducing the ability of the 8,800-member NPA to mount bloody attacks on government forces and civilian targets.

The listing has also affected the movements of Sison, who lives in self-exile in Utrecht in the Netherlands along with other top rebel leaders.

But it has also forced the CPP-NPA to step up extortion in the Philippines, which has suffered through a 35-year Maoist rebellion, officials said.

Deles said that the government panel has proposed to postpone the discussion on the terrorist tag issue and to proceed with other items in the agenda such as socio-economic and constitutional reforms.

She added that there was a provision in the past agreement that they would proceed to the next item on the agenda when confronted by an impasse.

The STAR Paris Bureau sought Sison’s comments on the issue and the top rebel leader said that the talks will not proceed because the "puppet government is using the terrorist listing to blackmail the NDF."

Sison said that the NDF will not change its position. "We demand that the GRP (Government of the Republic of the Philippines) honor the mutually accepted principle of national sovereignty and call on the United States and other governments involved not to encroach upon Philippine government jurisdiction but this government is to servile," he said.

Sison also declared that they’d rather wait for the next administration to be elected to resume the peace talks.

Chief government negotiator Silvestre Bello III confirmed that the two sides "found themselves in an impasse" on the first day of the talks Tuesday even before they could start discussing how to speed up the peace process.

"We will try to save the talks," Bello said in a statement issued by Malacañang. "It’s difficult, but we are confident we will overcome this," he said.

But the government panel stood firm on its position that the CPP-NPA must show legal and moral justification for the removal of the terrorist label.

The Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) has likewise stressed that the terrorist tags were set by the foreign governments on their own based on the actions of the CPP-NPA.

"Mr. Sison and the CPP-NPA were put on that list by discerning and sovereign governments on their own based on the actions of Mr. Sison and the CPP-NPA," Foreign Affairs Secretary Delia Albert said yesterday during a press conference.

"I sincerely believe that it will also be by their own categorical act that will bring about their removal from lists that label them as international terrorists and this act is to cast their lot for true and meaningful peace, this act is the signing of a final peace agreement," Albert added.

Mrs. Arroyo had sent off the government negotiators Sunday with high hopes that a peace accord would be signed before the presidential election, in which she is trailing popular movie star and opposition candidate Fernando Poe Jr. in the opinion polls.

In a statement released to the media, NDF negotiator Luis Jalandoni claimed the two sides had agreed to a 20-point agenda in the Feb. 10-13 talks but government negotiators "used the whole day of Feb. 11 to prevent full discussion" of the FTO listing.

"In the first place," Jalandoni said, "the government connived with the US government in making the ‘terrorist’ listing."

Peace talks with the rebels were suspended three years ago after the NPA murdered two politicians.

The guerrillas have been waging an armed rebellion for the past 35 years now and its objective has remained the same: to put up a government that will pave the way for the building of a socialist state.

As this developed, the militant Bagong Alyansang Makabayan assailed members of the peace panel for the impasse in the negotiations.

"The GRP is all hype about the talks but has shown that it has no intention of really pursuing progress in the negotiations. Its refusal to tackle the removal of the CPP-NPA’s terrorist listing has effectively endangered the progress of the talks," said Bayan spokesman Renato Reyes Jr.

Bayan added that the initial apparent interest of the GRP in resuming the talks was just "all for show and is clearly intended as an election propaganda tool."

Albert for her part expressed confidence that the contentious issues will be resolved and pave the way for the talks to begin.

"As I have said before, I anticipate that when peace is achieved, when violence becomes a thing of the past, when our political and ideological differences are settled in the public arena and not in the battlefield, the countries of the world will welcome this achievement and it would be most difficult for them to maintain their position that Mr. Sison is an international terrorist and that the CPP-NPA is an international terrorist organization," Albert said. — With Marvin Sy, Bong Fabe, Artemio Dumlao, Benjie Villa, AFP