Government now ready to resume peace talks with NDF

Former Labor secretary Nieves Confesor, who now heads the government panel negotiating with the communist rebels, bared yesterday that the government is now ready to resume peace talks with the National Democratic Front (NDF) and the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Confesor said that as a “goodwill and confidence-building measure” both the government and NDF peace panels agreed during its informal talks held in Oslo, Norway, to observe a ceasefire but guidelines of the truce have not been decided.

“The talks, we agreed, should be accompanied by a ceasefire as a goodwill and confidence-building measure. We also agreed that the formal peace talks should have a specific agenda and be time-bound. Finally, we agreed on the necessity of finishing the talks within 2009, before the babble of the 2010 elections begin,” Confesor said.

Confesor, who attended the government-NDF informal talks from Nov. 28 to 30 in Oslo, said the Royal Norwegian government acted as third party facilitator.

“Both parties agreed to work for the resumption of formal peace negotiations in 2009 in accordance with existing agreements,” she said.

She said the government proposed that the New People’s Army should stop their attacks on civilian targets and desist from recruiting child soldiers during the duration of the peace negotiations.

The NPA has been waging a 40-year guerrilla warfare that has killed thousands of people.

Confesor said the other agreements reached during the three-day informal talks include: to move forward the work of the Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC) for the implementation of the Comprehensive Agreement on the Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL) by finalizing the supplemental guides to enable its full implementation, among others.

She said the November meeting was a continuation of the cordial and frank exchange of views between the government and the NDF on the issues and concerns affecting the peace process that commenced in May 2008.

“In the just-ended talks in Oslo, the GRP panel proposed to hold another round of informal talks early next year to iron out details, such as the agenda and ground rules for the formal talks, the mechanics for the restoration of the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantee (JASIG) and pursue further discussions on the nature and modality of the ceasefire, but all these were rejected by the NDF,” Confesor said.

In a statement posted on their website, NDF negotiating panel chairman Luis Jalandoni said the prolonged ceasefire being offered by the government would mean the pacification and surrender of “revolutionary forces” and would not guarantee the release of Communist leaders from prison.

“The kind of ceasefire the Arroyo regime wants to impose on the NDFP amounts to pacification of the revolutionary forces and in fact prevents the substantive negotiations on social, economic and political reforms. It means the casting away of all existing agreements and the framework of peace negotiations already agreed upon in The Hague Joint Declaration of 1992 and subsequent agreements,” Jalandoni said.

He said the government “wants to convert the peace negotiations into ceasefire and surrender negotiations. It seeks to require the people’s democratic government to give up its governmental functions, which are misrepresented by the GRP as criminal.”

The NDF leader said the protracted ceasefire that the GRP seeks to impose on the NDFP violates The Hague Joint Declaration and is “diametrically opposed to the NDFP proposal for immediate and comprehensive truce previously proposed by the NDFP.”

Confesor said the informal talks hit a snag on the issue of ceasefire.

She said the counteroffer of the NDF was a “short sporadic ceasefire of five days to 10 days whenever the GRP and NDF panels would meet abroad in formal talks.”

Confesor said the NDF demanded the withdrawal of government troops for a few days while talks are underway but bring them back to the field after the end of each meeting.

“The government panel viewed as impractical the NDF’s requirement to withdraw the troops for a few days at a time while the parties are actually in negotiations abroad, and bringing them back to the field at the end of each meeting. A time-bound, agenda-bound formal process will require a different ceasefire modality,” Confesor said.

She said the government would insist on a ceasefire with communist rebels as a precondition to resume peace talks despite the NDF rejection of a temporary cessation of hostilities during the negotiations.

Malacañang officials said the NPA rebels have allegedly killed 94 civilians who were believed to be “counterrevolutionaries” since January.

“Police and military records show that during a 10-month period from Jan. 1 to Oct. 31, 2008, the NPA conducted 94 summary killings of innocent civilians they perceived as pro-government,” a Palace statement said.

“The NPA has continued its revolutionary taxation on business companies and even ordinary people. The burning of cell sites by the NPA has not abated,” it said.