NDF rejects new gov’t peace panel

Communist rebels rejected yesterday as "phony" the new government peace panel headed by former labor secretary Nieves Confesor.

Ruth de Leon, National Democratic Front (NDF) international information chief based in Utrecht, the Netherlands, said they are holding Confesor responsible for the March 17, 1995 hanging in Singapore of Filipina maid Flor Contemplacion, who was convicted of murdering another Filipina domestic helper, Delia Maga, and her employer’s three-year-old son.

"The NDF will not negotiate (with the) peace panel headed by Confesor because its sole objective is to prevent the resumption of formal talks by preconditioning these with the pacification of the (rebel movement)," she added.

De Leon said the government is "responsible for having cumulatively built obstacles" to the resumption of peace talks.

"Since the beginning, the NDF has made clear that it is amenable to short-term temporary ceasefire agreements on humanitarian grounds, such as those related to certain holidays, the release of prisoners-of-war, medical missions, the safe transport of the wounded in the battlefield, and the like," she said.

De Leon said the "precondition" for resuming negotiations violates agreements between the government and the NDF like The Hague Joint Declaration of 1992, and the Joint Agreement on the Sequence, Formation and Operationalization of the Reciprocal Working Committees.

"The (government) should not obstruct, delay or prevent the resumption of formal talks by trying to inveigle the NDF into accepting capitulation and pacification under the guise of prolonged or indefinite ceasefire or to convert the peace negotiations into ceasefire negotiations which obfuscate and lay aside the people’s demands for social, economic and political reforms," she said.

The NDF is willing to pursue an indefinite ceasefire with the government, and even a "lasting truce," but only after discussions on the "fourth and last item of the substantive agenda of the peace negotiations."

De Leon said the four substantive agendas of the talks are respect for human rights and international humanitarian laws; social and economic reforms; political and constitutional reforms; and, the disposition of rebel forces and rebel reintegration into mainstream society.

It was likely that the government "calculates that if at the least the peace negotiations can be converted to ceasefire negotiations, or at the most it can get a prolonged ceasefire agreement, then it can ignore the (NDF’s) demands for basic social, economic and political reforms," she added.

Other members of the peace panel set up by President Arroyo last February are: lawyer Rene Sarmiento, vice chair; lawyer Sedrey Candelaria, Annabelle Abaya, Paulyn Sicam, Prof. Rudy Rodil, Gen. Rodolfo Garcia, and lawyer Sylvia Okinlay-Paraguya.

Earlier, Confesor said in a statement: "So, we would like those (NPA) attacks to stop, we don’t want anyone moving into what we call raids, liquidation, encounters. We have to keep that down very, very low for us to get to listen to one another."

In August last year, the NDF pulled out of the peace talks to protest the US government’s decision to keep the Communist Party of the Philippines and New People’s Army in its international "terrorist" watch-list.

The panel was headed at that time by Silvestre Bello III.

Meanwhile, CPP spokesman Gregorio Rosal warned yesterday the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) to be "on guard" against "perceived attempts" by the US to "meddle in" its peace talks with the government.

A few days before the scheduled peace talks between the government and the MILF in Malaysia, the US State Department issued an official warning to Malacañang that the MILF maintains ties with the Indonesia-based terrorist group Jeemah Islamiyah, he added. — Benjie Villa