Manila, July 20: Peace negotiations between the government and the mainstream communist insurgent group will start in mid-August this year, President Gloria Arroyo’s peace adviser said.
Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Avelino Razon, in a radio interview, said prospects of finally hammering a peace agreement between the government and the 40-year-old communist insurgency movement appeared brighter than ever before as the rebel panel had interest in engaging the government for a possible settlement.
The NDF refers to the National Democratic Front, the umbrella group of organisations espousing ideals for the establishment of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist state under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the New People’s Army (NPA).
The announcement from Razon on the other hand is the closest the two sides had come to agreeing to a tentative date for the talk’s resumption.
Earlier, Luis Jalandoni, chairperson of the NDF panel announced that talks between the two sides are due to resume in Oslo, Norway “sometime August.”
The NDF withdrew from peace negotiations with the government in 2004 after the United States and its allies included the CPP-NPA in the list of foreign terrorist organisations.
The inclusion of the CPP-NPA in the list in effect prevents the organisation of seeking financial aid the from other nations, particularly those from the West like the US, Canada, Great Britain, among others.
Aside from this, Arroyo, in 2005, cancelled, the Joint Agreement of Safety and Immunity Guarantees or JASIG, a minor pact with the NDF which provides its negotiators with immunity from arrest.
With the impending resumption of the peace negotiation, the government lifted the suspension of the JASIG last Friday.
-Agencies