Govt seeks to resume talks with NDF, CPP

The Philippines is set to resume peace negotiations with communist insurgents, four years after long-running talks were suspended, President Gloria Arroyo's chief aide said Wednesday.

Norway is to host the talks with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the National Democratic Fron (NDF) at a still unspecified date, Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said.

He said the government would suspend arrest warrants against rebel leaders who take part in the talks, giving them immunity starting July 17 until the conclusion of talks aimed at ending the 40-year Maoist rebellion.

"We have enough good reason to agree to the resumption of the talks facilitated by the Norwegian government," Ermita told reporters.

Talks were suspended in 2004 after Arroyo refused communist demands that she ask the West -- including the United States and the European Union -- to cancel the rebels' designation as terrorists.

Many of the communists' top leaders live in exile in the Netherlands.

Their designation as "terrorists" on international lists led to the freezing of their assets and bank accounts, including those held by Jose Maria Sison, the group's exiled leader based in the Dutch city of Utrecht.

Ermita said the government peace panel was in "continuous contact" with communist negotiator Luis Jalandoni and with Sison.

"We hope with this statement we will be able to move forward," he said.

Arroyo has previously vowed to end long-running communist and Muslim separatist insurgencies by the time her six-year term ends in 2010.

However a wave of deadly bombings that left about a dozen dead and over 100 injured has clouded any prospect of resuming talks with Muslim insurgents in the south anytime soon.

The CPP and its 5,000-strong military wing, the New People's Army (NPA), has been waging a Maoist rebellion since 1969, in one of Asia's longest running communist insurgencies.