Norway to serve as facilitator in peace talks with communists

The Norwegian government has taken a more active role in the resumption of the stalled peace negotiations between the government and the communist National Democratic Front (NDF).

Defence secretary Eduardo Ermita said Norway, instead of just offering a venue for the resumption of talks, will now take the role of facilitator after it received from the Philippine government a copy of the final peace agreement draft to be offered to the NDF.

He said prospects of re-opening the stalled peace negotiation looked bright.

The talks were bogged down in July 2001 after two legislators were assassinated by the communist armed wing, the New People's Army (NPA).

During a recent briefing with foreign journalists, President Gloria Arroyo said she had requested Norway to take a more active role in the talks by serving as a facilitator in the negotiations.

The defence chief said he has high hopes that something substantial would result from the recent trip of the government panel chief Silvestre Bello III and his team in the Netherlands where the NDF is based, as a prelude to an informal meeting in Oslo, Norway.

Bello and his government panel headed for Norway on October 9-10 to conduct back-channel talks with communist leaders.

He, however, could not ascertain when the talks would resume because there are still issues that need to be sorted out, like the issue on the inclusion of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the NPA in the United States government and European Union's list of "foreign terrorist organisations".

The NDF panel had lamented the FTO tag on them and had been contesting this in international as well as domestic venues. The CPP-NPA-NDF, which had been waging a 34-year old Maoist insurgency to establish a communist state, claimed that they are "a national democratic liberation movement" and not a foreign terrorist organisation.