US terror tag on NPA can be tackled at the peace table: incoming NSA chief

From InterAksyon (Jun 5): US terror tag on NPA can be tackled at the peace table: incoming NSA chief

The peace negotiating table is the better venue for tackling the "terrorist" group tag that the United States government continues to keep on the New People's Army, the incoming National Security Adviser has said.


Hermogenes Esperon Jr. said the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan's suggestion that the incoming Duterte government request Washington to de-list the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), from its “Foreign Terrorists Organizations,” is a matter that should be part of the new administration's peace negotiations with the Left.

Incoming President Rodrigo Duterte, a former student of CPP founder-in-exile Jose Maria Sison, had early on listed rapprochement with the Left as a key plank of his administration. He has named former Justice secretary Silvestre Bello III, a veteran negotiator, to head his team of peace advisers, and he has named leftist leaders to Cabinet positions: as agrarian reform chief and Cabinet secretary.

The terror tag issue was raised Saturday by Bayan secretary-general Renato Reyes Jr., just as both negotiating panels were preparing to meet for  preliminary peace talks in Oslo, Norway, on June 15.

The US State Department lists the NPA among 58 foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs), a list that also includes the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) operating in Basilan and Sulu.

“The US once again hopes to use the terrorist listing as a form of intervention in an internal matter and cast a cloud of doubt even before the talks begin,” Reyes said in a statement.

He noted the fact that Cabinet posts were even offered by incoming President Duterte posts in his government as the best foil to the ‘terrorist’ claims of the US. "This practice of ‘terrorist listing’ should be rejected. Any form of US intervention in the peace talks should be exposed and opposed by the Filipino people who have long sought a just and lasting peace,” Reyes added.

Esperon said the request for the Duterte administration to flag Washington over its tagging of the NPA as a terror group looks like a “precondition” raised by the Left for the resumption of peace talks. But, he said, this can be settled at the level of the two negotiating panels: led by the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process on one hand and Luis Jalandoni of the National Democratic Front on the other.

“There should be no pre-conditions. Having said that, the NDF can bring up the issue on the negotiating table and it should be part of the peace talks,” said Esperon, former Armed Forces of the Philippines chief of staff, in a phone interview at the weekend.

Sincerity on both sides is key to successful peace negotiations, stressed Esperon, echoing the hopes of both sides for final peace agreement to end the armed hostilities waged by the NPA the past 47 years, making the insurgency the longest in Asia.

Way back when he was AFP chief under then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Esperon had vowed to eliminate the NPA.

CPP founder and NDF political consultant Sison had, in a press conference via Skype on June 3 in Quezon City, expressed optimism that a final peace agreement can be forged with the Duterte administration.

Sison, who has spent 30 years in self-exile in Utrecht, The Netherlands, said he will come home once a peace agreement is in place.

http://interaksyon.com/article/128665/us-terror-tag-on-npa-can-be-tackled-at-the-peace-table-incoming-nsa-chief