DAVAO CITY—The incoming presidential adviser on the peace process said Thursday the Philippines may ask the United States to remove exiled communist leader Jose Ma. Sison from its list of terrorists to speed up the healing of old wounds due to ideological differences.
“We will do that, we will cross the bridge when we get there because negotiations are very sensitive,” said Jesus Dureza, who has been tapped to oversee the new government’s peace initiatives.
Dureza is set to fly to Oslo Friday to attend a forum sponsored by the Norwegian government and two days of exploratory meetings with Sison and other communist leaders.
On Wednesday night, National Democratic Front negotiator Fidel Agcaoili pointed out that the United States was an obstacle to Sison’s return to the Philippines because Washington recently reaffirmed the inclusion of the Communist Party of the Philippines’ armed wing, the New People’s Army, in its list of foreign terrorist organizations.
“Joma’s coming home is a very ticklish issue,” Agcaoili told reporters here.
“First of all, the US has again come up with a statement that they have put the CPP and the NPA in the terrorist list. That really poses a problem,” he added.
Duterte, known for his ties with the left, has expressed his desire to end the nearly five-decade-long insurgency through a comprehensive peace agreement with the CPP-NDF-NPA.
For Sison to return home, he would have to make stopovers in different countries where he might be vulnerable to US intervention through Interpol.
“If the US proves to be a spoiler, through its control of Interpol, they might present a warrant to him in Taipei. Then everything is kaput. So it’s an issue that would have to be discussed seriously,” Agcaoili said.
“There has to be some guarantees from the Dutch government, the Norwegian government, including the US government to respect the sovereignty of the Filipino people in their desire to pursue a just and lasting peace. To allow Professor Sison to come home without interference. I don’t know if the US will agree to that… it has always been a bullying agent,” he added.
In a statement, Sison slammed the US government for mislabelling the CPP and the NPA.
“The US is a big bloody hypocrite for using its so-called policy of war on terror to continue its long-running practice of aggressive wars, which are the worst forms of terrorism according to the Nuremberg principles,” Sison said.
“By mislabelling revolutionary forces like the CPP and NPA as terrorist and intensifying propaganda against them, US imperialism which is the biggest terrorist power in the world is trying to sabotage and upset the peace process which the incoming Duterte government and the NDFP are determinedly trying to resume, develop and advance,” he added.
Sison had earlier expressed hopes that his nearly three decades of living in exile in The Netherlands would end as early as July 2016, once Duterte is sworn into office.
“I want to visit [Manila] in July or August to hold serious talks with President Duterte,” Sison said early June.
Dureza denounced Washington’s terrorist tag.
“We’re going to meet with them not because they’re tagged as terrorists but [because] they’re Filipinos who wants to talk about peace,” he added.
“We assure you that when we meet we will give updates, whether there are results or [not]. The change now is that there is more transparency in negotiations,” he added.
Formal peace talks between the Aquino administration and the CPP-NDF-New People’s Army collapsed in February 2011 because the communist group insisted on the reactivating the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (Jasig), a move rejected by the government after the original list, stored in an old floppy disk, got corrupted and could no longer be retrieved.
But incoming government chief negotiator Silvestre Bello III said the Jasig can be reconstituted under a Duterte administration.