Reds score Aquino for scuttling talks

THE communists on Sunday accused the Aquino administration of “scuttling the peace negotiations” by rejecting their offer to hold formal talks in Oslo next month.

Fidel Agcaoili, spokesman of the National Democratic Front’s negotiating panel, said the government also violated the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees in shelving the talks on the release of detained rebels until the Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms was signed.

He cited an Aug. 19 letter from government chief negotiator Alexander Padilla to his NDF counterpart, Luis Jalandoni, in which Padilla insisted on finishing the talks on reforms first before resuming formal talks.

“The government position expressed in writing by Padilla brazenly violates the [immunity guarantees] and the entire peace process and alerts the NDF that the government is already scuttling the peace negotiations,” Agcaoili said.

He said Padilla had written that there would be no formal talks until the reciprocal working committees on the talks on reforms had completed their work, and that no NDF negotiator would be immune from arrest until the formal talks started.

He described Padilla as a “provocative psywar agent” masquerading as a peace negotiator.

Padilla repeated his position that the NDF should stop fooling the people, pretending they were for the peace talks when they were only after the release of the detained leaders of the New People’s Army.

“How can we scuttle the peace talks when we have already released five NPA leaders without any precondition?” Padilla said.

He said the communists responded to the government’s confidence-building measure with more attacks and the abduction of Lingig Mayor Henry Dano and four civilian officers of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology.

“Obviously, there is a pattern—that their primary concern is the release of detained rebels,” Padilla said earlier.

“It is their fault why the talks on [reforms] was postponed, so the ball is now on their court.

“There is a limit up to when we can be taken advantage of. They are making fools out of us.”

Meanwhile, President Benigno Aquino III said Sunday the military will not launch offensives against rebel leader Ameril Umbra Kato out of respect for the declaration by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s central committee that the renegade commander and his lost command is an “internal problem.”

“The MILF has already said that this is an internal problem for them and they will handle it,” Mr. Aquino told reporters at the SM Megamall after opening a photo exhibit marking the 28th death anniversary of his father, former Senator Benigno Aquino Jr.

“We agreed to that.” –Joyce Pangco Pañares, Manila Standard Today