Palace says communists delaying peace talks

A protracted war alongside protracted negotiations.

Malacañang suggested on Monday this communist guerrilla strategy, rejecting rebel claims that the Aquino administration was derailing the search for an end to the world’s longest-running Maoist insurgency.

“We would like to have a peace agreement with them,” presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said in a news briefing. “It is not us who are the stumbling block to the peace process.”

He said the government had always acted in good faith in negotiations, but the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), New People’s Army (NPA) and National Democratic Front (NDF) had not reciprocated accordingly.

“It is unfortunate that after 22 difficult years of trying to achieve peace with the CPP-NPA-NDF, the talks are again in another prolonged impasse,” Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Teresita “Ging” Deles said in a statement.

“But we have realized that the tortuous and protracted pace of the peace talks has been designed by the CPP-NPA-NDF precisely to make the process protracted, and in fact, unending, while, without conceding anything to the government, it harvests for itself as many concessions as it can in terms of virtual international recognition and the release of their detained comrades,” Deles said.

“We are therefore bringing the peace talks back to its core intent of ending the violence against our people and attaining a just and lasting peace. To do this, there is a need for a new approach under which the community and other peace stakeholders should play a pivotal role. And on this rests our hope and belief that peace will, sooner than later, reign in our land.”

In interviews with the Inquirer last week, NPA commanders in Abra province expressed skepticism that a peace agreement would be forged to end the decades-old Maoist insurgency.

Abuses by government troops in clear breach of the 1998 Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (Carhrihl) have made such an agreement difficult, they claimed.

The rebels singled out the military’s counterinsurgency program, “Oplan Bantay Laya,” as the main factor for the rise in human rights violations.

For instance, air strikes on May 31 by the military that hit rice fields and residential areas in  Lat-ey and Alligang in Malibcong, Abra, wounded two minors, aged 13 and 17, the  Abra Human Rights Alliance said.

NPA child soldiers?

Deles said she tried to confirm the allegation from Malibcong Mayor Benito Bacuyag who said there was no record of casualties in the air strikes. The mayor suggested that those wounded could have been NPA child soldiers, Deles said.

Negotiations between the CPP-NPA-NDF and the government have been stalled since 2004.

Lacierda recalled that the government had pushed for a ceasefire and followed international conventions on the conduct of warfare with the rebels.

“I think if you look at the history, or rather several news reports, several years back, we have not used landmines, we have not violated Carhrihl,” Lacierda said.

“In the last proposal of NDF chair Joma Sison, he asked for a ceasefire. We were very happy with it. Suddenly, they withdrew that offer of cessation of hostilities. So it’s not us who’s stopping it,” he said.

The NPA has come under fire for using a landmine in the May 27 ambush of a truckload of policemen in Cagayan province that left eight policemen dead. They were en route to a medical examination when they were waylaid by the rebels, who detonated the landmine before opening fire.

Precondition

Lacierda said the formal peace process had been “stymied” by the rebel insistence on the release of captured insurgents as a precondition for the resumption of talks.

Signed in 1995, the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (Jasig) guarantees NDF members, consultants and staff who work with the negotiating team immunity from arrest. Under the agreement, holders of a safe-conduct pass should not engage in criminal activities, such as terrorism and extortion, or hostile acts against the government.

14 rebels

Lacierda said what stalled the negotiations was a disagreement on the verification of the status of 14 rebels that the NDF wanted released.

The floppy disk containing the names of the 14 rebels had been stored in a vault in the Netherlands. A Dutch bishop opened the vault in the presence of government and NDF representatives, and they found the file corrupted.

Lacierda said the CPP-NPA proposed a new list, but the government rejected this since there was no assurance the new list would carry the names of individuals on the original list.

Brig. Gen. Domingo Tutaan Jr., spokesman of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, expressed doubts about the insurgents’ sincerity.

“Whatever the peace talks will be, whether on the local or national level, [the CPP] is just trying to make an excuse for the atrocities of the NPA,” Tutaan told reporters in an interview.

“They are just covering up the atrocities they have done…. These are human rights violations,” he maintained.

Tutaan said the prospect of forging a peace deal with the NPA was “dim because of the NPA’s continuing violence and attacks on civilian communities.”—With a report from Marlon Ramos