MANILA, June 8 (Xinhua) -- Incoming Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte will send his peace advisers to Oslo, Norway next week to start preliminary talks with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), the political arm of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People's Army, the NDFP said in a statement on Wednesday.
"We are now preparing for the preliminary talks in Oslo next week to agree on the agenda for the resumption of peace talks in July," said Jose Maria Sison, chief political consultant of the NDFP, in a statement.
"We are ready to agree on the drafts of important documents for finalization and signing by the negotiating panels and for approval by the principals in July," said Sison.
The Leftist leader, who is based in the Netherlands, seems optimistic that the peace talks with the incoming administration will work out this time.
"There should never be any problems in the peace process that we cannot discuss and fix promptly, directly or through our emissaries. We have the necessary degree of rapport to exchange views and come to an agreement quickly in order to bring the peace process to a successful and happy conclusion," Sison said.
President-elect Duterte, who will be sworn into office on June 30, said he would send incoming peace adviser Jesus Dureza and incoming Labor Secretary Sylvester Bello and Hernani Braganza to Oslo to initiate the talks.
NDFP spokesperson Fidel Agcaoili said the NDFP has already fromed a five-member team that will talk with the Dureza and the peace emissaries.
Duterte has revived the peace talks in a bid to lure the rebels to return to the negotiating table.
He hopes to end Muslim and communist insurgencies during his six-year term of office. In fact, he immediately announced a week after the May 9 elections that he will name both Dureza and Bello to handle the peace process, describing both officials as "men of expertise and wisdom."
Indeed Dureza and Bello are not new in the peace process. Then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo appointed Dureza as Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process. Bello, for his part, took part in the government's peace negotiations from the time of then President Corazon Aquino up to the time of Arroyo.
The peace talks between President Benigno Aquino and the Left bogged down in 2013.
Many are optimistic about Duterte's overtures to talk with the Left. Duterte was Sison's student at the Lyceum University in the 1960s. In 1987, Sison fled to Europe to seek asylum as a political refugee soon after peace talks failed and has stayed abroad ever since.
It is estimated that the NPA has 4,000 members and it has been fighting the government since 1969 in one of Asia's longest-running insurgencies.
