Gov’t to free 5 leftist rebels as goodwill

Five communist rebels are to be freed in March by the Philippine government as a sign of goodwill for forthcoming peace talks, officials said Friday.

But the government warned the Maoists, who are still waging a 35-year insurgency, that it would not formally ask the United States to remove them from its terrorist blacklist.

The government agreed to free over 100 "political prisoners" after talks with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its political arm, the National Democratic Front (NDF), in the Norwegian capital Oslo earlier this month.

"Within March we expect some releases," presidential adviser on the peace process Teresita Deles told a Foreign Correspondents Association press forum.

Chief government negotiator Silvestre Bello said three women and two men would be freed before a second round of talks at an unconfirmed foreign venue in March.

However, Bello said the Philippines could not guarantee that the CPP and its armed wing, the New People’s Army (NPA), would be taken off the US State Department’s 2002 list of "foreign terrorist organizations."

The Norway talks nearly collapsed after the rebels insisted on having the terrorist tag removed, but both sides eventually agreed on a statement in which Manila agreed to "call" on the US to do so.

"Clearly the wording (in the agreement) is that we would only urge the US government and the other members of the European Union to help or support the peace process by way of resolving the issue of terrorist listing," Bello said.

"There is no direct commitment to ask any of these states to delist them, but merely to urge them to help the peace process. Whether they would delist it as a way of help, that is left to the sound discretion of the foreign governments," he said.

Bello said the rebels had "manifested their preference for Beijing, China" for the March talks. — AFP