NESBRU – The Philippine government and communist rebels resumed peace talks near Oslo on Tuesday, more than six years after the last round broke down, but prospects for progress remained uncertain after the arrest hours earlier of a top guerilla leader. “Dialogue is not a sign of weakness. It is a strategy of the brave. It opens doors,” Norway’s deputy foreign minister Espen Barth Eide declared in opening remarks at a Nesbru hotel overlooking the icy Oslo fjord.
The two sides finally agreed last month to talks, the first since 2004, in a bid to end the decades-old rebellion which has claimed thousands of lives. Philippine President Benigno Aquino’s administration expressed hopes that the festering conflict would be over by 2014, but the fact that fighting has persisted is a bad sign for the already slow-moving peace process.
“Clearly there is much that divides the two sides at this table … but there is also much that unites us,” Teresita Quintos-Deles, Aquino’s advisor at the talks, said in an opening statement. “Let it not be said that the peace talks failed because of the failure of nerves, because the failure of will, because of the failure of imagination,” he added.
Luis Jalandoni, the chief negotiator for the National Democratic Front (NDF) – the political arm of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), was also upbeat. “We stand at the threshold of a new beginning,” he said. “It is imperative that the two negoitating parties do away with the transgressions, gore and filth of the previous regime (headed by former president Gloria Arroyo), and pave the way for accelerated and fruitful negotiations,” he added.
Observers however have cautioned that the seven days of closed-door negotiations focused on economic and social reform, and especially the agrarian reform called for by the communists, probably will not lead to an immediate breakthrough. In a potential threat to the talks, attended by around 20 delegates from each side, the Philippine army announced just hours before the negotiations began that they had captured Alan Jasminez, a central committee member of the CPP.
He will stand trial for rebellion, armed forces chief of staff General Ricardo David said, while a police statement said he also faced 13 murder charges. The NDF demanded his immediate release, insisting he enjoys immunity during the talks. “It could undermine the peace talks if the release of Alan Jasminez as a political consultant of the NDF is not carried out … as soon as possible,” NDF negotiator Jalandoni told AFP.
“We hope it will not be a prejudice to the talks,” he added. There have been other discouraging signs since the two sides agreed on January 18 to kick-start the peace process. Less than a week after that agreement, rebels killed five policemen in a well-planned ambush in a town in northern Philippines. And a day before the talks, the rebels said they were holding a policeman as a prisoner of war.
On Sunday, the army said a rebel landmine in a remote part of southern Philippines killed one civilian and wounded six people, including two soldiers. The rebels meanwhile honoured a promise made last month and declared a truce on Monday to coincide with the seven days of talks. The government has said it will do likewise. The CPP and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), launched their uprising in 1969, in a conflict which has killed tens of thousands of people, according to military estimates.
About 4,700 NPA rebels continue to fight, mainly in the poorest areas of the Philippines, earning funds primarily through extortion from businesses and provincial politicians. Since 1986, successive Philippine administrations have held peace talks with the communists through their Netherlands-based political arm, the NDF.
But the talks have foundered, among other reasons, on NDF demands to be removed from US and EU lists of “terrorist” organisations – a condition that remains a priority, according to NDF founder Jose Maria Sison. A press conference is scheduled for the final day of the talks, next Monday.
