PRESIDENT Benigno Aquino III on Monday challenged the communist rebels to show sincerity in pursuing the peace process after they abducted a mayor and four jail officials in separate incidents in Mindanao.
“They have to show gestures that will prove they are sincere in the peace talks,” Mr. Aquino said in Camp Crame, where he met with government peace negotiators to discuss the abduction of Lingig Mayor Henry Dano on Saturday and of four jail officials in Davao three weeks ago.
A source who was present during the meeting said the talks centered on whether the abductions could be considered violations of an agreement to respect human rights that were signed by both parties.
“The people they abducted are not combatants, so in effect these can be considered violations,” the source said.
The source said the government negotiating panel would also raise the issue of signing a truce with the communists to rein in their armed wing, the New People’s Army.
Dano was abducted in Surigao del Sur on the same day that government chief negotiator Alexander Padilla was talking peace with communist leader Fidel Agcaoili in Magallanes in Makati City.
Agcaoili assured Padilla during the meeting that the NPA was just “waiting for the best opportunity” to release the four jail officials as a sign of goodwill.
Dano was said to have been abducted for refusing to pay what the communists call revolutionary taxes.
The abductions came after the government had just released four top-level NPA leaders—Jovencio Balweg, Angelina Ipong, Maria Luisa Pucray, and Jaime Soledad—as part of confidence-building measures to advance the peace talks.
On a separate front, the President said any final agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front would need congressional action, and promised that any accord would be transparent.
He made his remarkes after holding secret talks with the leader of the Moro rebels, Al Haj Murad, in Tokyo over the weekend.
Senator Francis Escudero praised the President for “going out of his comfort zone” by meeting Murad, but blamed his people for allowing him to be put on the spot in the peace talks.
He said the meeting showed that the presidential adviser on the peace process was not doing her job. –Joyce Pangco Pañares with Macon Ramos-Araneta and Florante S. Solmerin, Manila Standard Today
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