LUCENA CITY –– Communist rebel leader Jose Maria “Joma” Sison welcomed the report that President Duterte remained open to the resumption of the peace talks.
“I welcome the desire for resuming peace negotiations, as expressed by Senator Go on behalf of President Duterte,” Sison, Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder, said from Utrecht in The Netherlands, where he has been living in self-imposed exile since 1987.
However, Sison has made it clear that the planned one-on-one meeting between him and Duterte as a precondition for the reopening of the formal negotiation should still be held in a neutral country and not in the Philippines.
He said: “It is best for the GRP (Government of the Republic of the Philippines) and NDFP (National Democratic Front of the Philippines) negotiating panels to prepare for my one-on-one meeting with Duterte by formally resuming the peace negotiations and accomplishing the Interim Peace Agreement in a neutral venue abroad.”
Sison added: “They need only a few weeks to work and realize these objectives.”
Sison made the statement in reaction to the information from Go that the country’s chief executive remained open to the revival of the aborted peace talks.
However, Go stressed that the President wanted to personally meet Sison in the country before the reopening of the negotiation.
Sison said once the government and the communist peace panels meeting took place, “the NDFP will have high confidence to agree to my one-on-one meeting with Duterte.”
“The main purpose of this meeting is for Duterte and me to agree on the ways and means to accelerate the completion of the comprehensive agreements on social, economic, political, and constitutional reforms, and ensure the implementation of these reforms against foreign powers and local reactionary forces that are adverse to them,” Sison explained.
The NDFP is the umbrella group of communist-led underground groups conducting on-and-off peace talks with the government since 1986./lzb