CPP, NPA want Arroyo to ask US, Europe to take them off terror lists

Communist guerrillas asked President Arroyo yesterday to lobby for their removal from US and European Union terrorist lists, warning that the terror label may hamper talks to end their 35-year-old insurgency.

The chief rebel negotiator in the Norwegian-brokered peace talks, Luis Jalandoni said it was "utterly baseless and malicious" — and a violation of Philippine sovereignty — to include the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its 8,600-member armed wing, the New People’s Army, in US and EU lists of international terrorist organizations.

"This terrorist listing... is a major impediment... for the advance of the talks," he said.

A new round of negotiations is set to resume Aug. 24 in Oslo, Norway.

Chief government negotiator Silvestre Bello III said the government was studying the rebels’ demand.

Bello described the issue as contentious, but said it "will not bring down the talks," due to an agreement to set aside unresolved problems to make sure the peace process continues.

He said that the talks later this month would focus on social and economic reforms, as demanded by the guerrillas.

Bello urged his counterparts from the Netherlands-based National Democratic Front (NDF) to show up at the resumption of the talks in Oslo without any pre-conditions.

"They cannot use this issue to maybe suspend or maybe even call for a suspension of the talks," Bello said in a television interview. "That would be a violation of our agreed framework for the talks."

Bello said the rebels also want the military and the police to suspend "offensive" operations in the provinces of Camarines Sur and Albay as a condition for the release of 1Lt. Ronaldo Fedelino and Pfc. Ronnel Nemeno, two soldiers they kidnapped in March.

On the other hand, the European Commission said its terrorist tag on the CPP-NPA will stay unless there is proof of an end to the hostilities.

Johannes De Kok, head of the delegation of the European Commission to the Philippines, saiod there is no need for the EU to renew the terrorist label on the CPP-NPA as this will stay until "such time that concrete developments have been made to merit its removal."

"Soon as the (CPP-NPA) cease to continue these terrorist activities, the chances of the terrorist label being removed will be greater. We all look forward for these peace negotiations to succeed," De Kok said.

Jalandoni, speaking at a forum in Manila, said the Marxist group is a well-known movement that observes international laws on conflicts, including provisions on human rights and the treatment of prisoners.

He cited the "humane treatment" of the two soldiers. However, the guerrillas said on Sunday they have canceled a plan to release the captives after the military refused to halt offensives.

Jalandoni accused the Arroyo administration of having prodded Washington and the European Union to blacklist the rebels as part of its efforts to crush their movement.

He demanded that Mrs. Arroyo issue a statement endorsing the lifting of the terrorist designation, and that the Department of Justice declare that the guerrillas’ inclusion on the lists was baseless and infringes on Philippine sovereignty.

Jalandoni said the guerrillas would also press for the release of 28 remaining political detainees and the indemnification of human rights victims during the reign of late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

The next round of talks will be the first since Mrs. Arroyo was sworn in for a new six-year term on June 30. She has vowed to pursue talks with Marxist and Muslim separatist rebels — but has warned her government would use force to quell violence.

In Washington on Monday, Secretary of State Colin Powell renewed an order classifying the NDF’s mother organization, the CPP, as a foreign terrorist group.

The law makes it illegal for people in the US or subject to US jurisdiction to provide material support to the CPP and its armed wing and requires US financial institutions to block its assets.

It also provides a basis for the United States to deny visas to representatives and members of the Maoist group.

However, the State Department said the move did not prevent any possible peace settlement between Manila and the rebels, who have waged a 35-year guerrilla campaign that has claimed thousands of lives and arrested the former US colony’s economic development.

Two alleged NPA members have been given life terms for the assassination of US military adviser James Nicholas Rowe in Manila in 1989. Washington has put pressure on Manila to reject a rebel demand to release the two convicts as a condition for the peace talks.

Reacting to Washington’s decision to continue regarding the CPP and its armed wing as "foreign terrorist organizations," the group’s spokesman Gregorio Rosal said this move is a "desperate attempt to draw attention away from its own actions and notoriety as the world’s number one terrorist."

"After unleashing so much terror in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere," the administration of US President George W. Bush "has no moral right and legitimacy to condemn Filipino revolutionaries as terrorists," Rosal said.

He maintained that their group is a "legitimate revolutionary organization" fighting for the country’s "independence" from "US imperialism."

It was in August 2002 when Washington first tagged the CPP and the NPA as terrorists, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on US soil. Later that year, the EU followed suit, including in its list of terrorists exiled communist leader Jose Ma. Sison, who has been living as a "political refugee" in the Netherlands.

Rosal claimed their group has "firmly adhered to principled, pro-people and humanitarian policies and practice, as well as faithful adherence to and implementation of international conventions on human rights and international humanitarian laws."

He said while American soldiers tortured and humiliated their prisoners in Iraq, the NPA has accorded Fedelino and Nemeno all the rights to which they are entitled as "prisoners of war."

"You can very well see who the real terrorist is," Rosal added.

Rosal declared that the CPP "will not take this sitting down," and demanded in behalf of the entire group for Mrs. Arroyo to "take a stand against US interventionism and its terrorist-tagging of the CPP and NPA." — AFP, Marvin Sy, Benjie Villa