Incoming President Rodrigo Duterte said Sunday he would seek an early start to peace talks with communist rebels and free detained guerrilla chieftains when he takes office on June 30.
He also offered safe passage for Jose Maria Sison, the founder of the insurgency who fled to European exile nearly 30 years after the failure of initial attempts to end one of Asia’s longest armed insurgencies.
Duterte is betting on his close friendship with Sison, his former university teacher, to bring a swift political settlement to a rebellion that has killed about 30,000 people by official count and impoverished vast swathes of the country.
“I will… give him (Sison) a safe-conduct pass,” the mayor said at a midnight news conference.
President Benigno Aquino 3rd revived peace talks soon after taking office in 2010 but shelved them in 2013, accusing the rebels of insincerity in efforts to achieve a political settlement.
The talks got bogged down after the communists demanded the release of scores of their jailed comrades whom they described as “political prisoners,” which the Aquino government rejected.
Duterte, who met a rebel emissary in Davao 10 days ago, said he will be sending out two members of his Cabinet to Norway for preparatory meetings with the exiled rebel leaders.
Norway had acted as go-between in failed peace talks between the Aquino government and the rebels.
“I have commissioned them to go to Oslo… to go there for the framework and agenda that (we) will talk about,” the mayor said.
He said the two Cabinet emissaries will then “maybe accompany Jose Maria Sison home.”
Should his emissaries be able to hammer out an agreement, “then I will release all the political prisoners,” Duterte added.
http://www.manilatimes.net/duterte-to-free-tiamzons/264919/
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