DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 19 June) – Presidential spokesperson Harry Roque clarified on Tuesday that the Royal Norwegian Government can still continue as a third-party facilitator to the peace talks between government (GRP) and National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) peace panels.
During a press briefing in Cotabato City on Tuesday, Roque said all third parties who have been involved in the previous peace talks and who would want to continue to be involved can still participate.
He reiterated that President Rodrigo R. Duterte wants the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations to be held in the Philippines.
“What I was emphasizing was the desire of the President to hold it here, but a third party facilitator does not have to be abroad to facilitate the peace talks,” he said.
Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (PAPP) Secretary Jesus Dureza said the Norwegian government has remained patient, resilient and steadfast in its help to the Filipino people despite the challenges in the peace process with the communists.
“I am now in Oslo, Norway to attend an International Forum on Conflict Mediation and to express our country’s gratitude for Norway’s significant and continuing support to the long drawn peace negotiations with the Left. I am also here to explain to them the reason why the planned resumption of the peace talks discussed during backchannel meetings was reset,” he said.
But in a statement, Rey Claro Casambre, a consultant of NDFP who is also executive director of the Philippine Peace Center, said that insisting on
holding the talks here is tantamount to calling off the negotiations.
“The clear and simple reason is that there is no way peace talks held
in the Philippines can be protected and spared from sabotage by the
spoilers and enemies of a genuine peace process – those who oppose
meaningful reforms that would alter the status quo in favor of the
greater majority of the population,” he said.
Casambre added that the NDFP would never agree to hold the peace talks in the Philippines and the previously signed agreements between both parties, which have been followed for 26 years, state that peace talks must be held at a foreign neutral venue.
He said government throws the “entire peace negotiation into a darker cloud of uncertainty, threatening even to derail the talks permanently” when it postponed the supposed fifth round of talks in Oslo, Norway on June 28.
He believed that the government has deeper reasons for its decision to move the June 28 GRP-NDFP peace talks in Oslo other than the supposed need for President Rodrigo R. Duterte to study the documents produced by four rounds of backchannel talks.
“These documents, after all, have been at least three months in the making, with the GRP negotiating panel constantly requesting breaks to check and countercheck with their principals if they are still in line with their marching orders,” Casambre added.
Duterte told his government panel to “reset” the talks with the communists, seeing the need to engage the “bigger table” through consultations to ensure all consensus points and agreements to be forged between GRP and NDFP peace panels would have the support of the people.
Before leaving for Oslo on Sunday, Dureza said the President would review the previously signed agreements with the NDFP such as the 1992 Joint Hague Agreement Declaration, 1995 Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees, and 1998 Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL).
Dureza said the President wants to personally study those agreements because they might be the reason for the intermittent talks that had been going on for many years.
Casambre called on peace advocates in strongly
deploring the “postponement” of peace talks, riddled as it is “with crass
inconsistency, lacking in integrity and forthrightness, and with
thinly cloaked ill intentions.[]
He criticized the government’s attempt at engaging the public on issues and in discussions “to lend legitimacy to the process,” saying it is an “old, worn out track,” which had been employed by the Arroyo and Aquino administrations with the intent and end result of never coming back to the negotiating table.
“Have both panels not been doing so since the talks began in 1992? And why desist from holding the formal talks while consultations are ongoing?[]
