RP panel says no to VFA abrogation

Government negotiators rejected yesterday the demand of communist leaders to scrap the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) before they take part in peace talks that will start on Friday in Oslo, Norway.

However, chief government negotiator Silvestre Bello III told reporters yesterday the matter may still be discussed at the negotiating table.

The government also turned down a rebel demand to free Donato Continente and Juanito Itaas, the convicted killers of US Army Col. James Rowe.

Continente and Itaas were among the communist hit men of the Alex Boncayao Brigade who ambushed and shot Rowe in 1989 as his car was entering the Joint US Military and Advisory Group (JUSMAG) heaquarters in Quezon City.

US Embassy spokesman Tom Skipper told reporters ington opposes the release of the killers.

"Our position has not changed and the Philippine government knows it," he said.

Communist leaders also want the government to free Leoncio Pitao, the New People’s Army commander, who ordered the kidnapping of Army Gen. Victor Orbillo and his intelligence officer Capt. Eduardo Montealto in the hinterlands of Davao del Sur in 1998.

Bello said the government would strive to "conclude each substantive issue within six months" to enable the two sides to meet their targetted political settlement in 18 months, or in October 2002.

It would a "talk and fight" situation because the communists had not agreed to a ceasefire, he added.

On the other hand, Agrarian Reform Secretary Hernani Braganza, a member of the negotiating panel, said the government cannot abrogate international agreements at the snap of a finger.

"We will study (the demand)," he said. "But kindly remember that the resumption of the peace talks, historically, were conducted without preconditions. If they are setting preconditions, that is wrong."

On the campaign trail, re-electionist Sen. Gregorio "Gringo" Honasan urged the National Democratic Front (NDF) to stop making "inflexible demands" on the government.

"We’ve gone a long way to reach a consensus to talk peace with again," he said. "We’d not want to see a deadlock, and much more a breakdown, of the peace talks once we begin to make sudden and inflexible demands."

Honasan said chief NDF negotiator Luis Jalandoni should not make demands which he knows the government could not grant because of legal and constitutional limitations.

"Although it may order to speed up the resolution of their court cases, the government could not go about interfering with the judicial process in view of the constitutional principle of separation of powers," he said.

Honasan said the NDF should realize that the government could not make any concessions, except on crimes which the communist rebels might have committed in pursuit of their political beliefs.

"The freedom of these rebels should be better resolved in courts than in peace talks," he said.

Apart from the VFA’s abrogation, the NDF is also pressing for the release of "political prisoners," and the country’s withdrawal from the World Trade Organization.

Government negotiators are set fly to Oslo tomorrow, while Jalandoni and other communist leaders will stop over in the Netherlands before proceeding to Norway. – Aurea Calica