The Philippine government said Thursday it will resume peace talks with communist rebels that have been stalled since 2001, following a meeting with exiled guerrilla leaders in the Netherlands.
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The venue and date of the talks with the National Democratic Front, an umbrella group for Marxists, were not set and agenda details needed to be worked out. The two sides indicated talks would happen in coming months, with the government saying possibly within weeks. ``We agreed to resume formally the talks, hopefully by the end of July,'' chief government negotiator Silvestre Bello told reporters. The two sides have been in on-again, off-again talks since 1992, but have not met since talks in Norway two years ago. The government pulled out after guerrillas killed a former congressman they accused of human rights violations.
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The agreement Thursday to resume talks came a day after President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ordered legal action against communist leaders following two rebel attacks that left 29 government soldiers and militiamen and a soldier's wife dead earlier in the week. Rebel negotiator Fidel Agcaoili, in a telephone interview from the Dutch city of Utrecht, said July might be too early for the new round of talks and that they might not happen before September or October.
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He said the rebels proposed that talks be held in China, while the government prefers Oslo, Norway.
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