Duterte wants to review previous deals with Reds during 3-month halt of back channel talks
President Rodrigo Duterte wants to review all the agreements signed by the previous administrations with the communist rebels.
With this, back channel talks with the National Democratic Front, the political wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army, are suspended for three months.
In a statement issued on Thursday, Hernani Braganza, government negotiator for back channel talks with the NDF, said during his meeting this week with the NDF in Utrecht, the Netherlands, they conveyed the "Philippine government's decision to suspend all back channel talks with the NDF pending the three-month review of all signed agreements related to the peace negotiations."
"The suspension, however, does not preclude communications between the two parties if deemed necessary," he added.
In a press briefing in Malacanang, Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque said included in the agreements subject to Duterte's review were the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees and Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law.
"They will be checked one by one and see what - (whether) it's binding on a government itself or if there are agreements that are binding only on specific administrations," he said.
Roque said the deals with the NDF were not similar to a treaty wherein a state is bound to honor and respect.
He said the Maoist group is not a state.
"So that's the difficulty in the talks with non-state actors. If it's a state and non-state actors, you all know that in the conduct of peace talks, there are different thrusts by different administrations and the President wants to be clear if he agrees to all the accords which were signed by his predecessors," he explained.
During the June 18-20 back channel talks in Utrecht, Braganza explained why the Philippine government suddenly canceled the supposed June 28 resumption of formal peace talks.
The government team also informed the NDF the decision of Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Jesus Dureza to utilize the three-month review period to consult instrumentalities of government and the general public about the negotiations and the substantive issues involved.
The NDF, in a separate statement, said it will also conduct its own consultations on the Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER), to review the remaining outstanding issues in the sections on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ARRD) and National Industrialization and Economic Development (NIED), as well as to polish its draft on Environmental Rehabilitation and Compensation and Upholding People’s Rights to prepare for the continuation of negotiations on CASER.
It will also hold unilateral consultations with its working group on Political and Constitutional Reforms (PCR), it said.
Braganza said the NDF is also "favorably considering" the invitation extended by Dureza and Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III, government chief negotiator, for NDF representatives to join the public consultations on the peace negotiations.
The CPP-NPA-NDF has been waging war against the government for almost 50 years. Celerina Monte/DMS
