GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVES and communists leaders are eyeing to revive the stalled peace process in August while “informal meetings” will be carried out this month to discuss socioeconomic reforms as well as the possibility of declaring another “interim unilateral cease-fire.”

In a press briefing at Malacañang on Tuesday, government chief negotiator Silvestre H. Bello III said he has agreed with his communist counterpart, Fidel V. Agcaoili, to continue the negotiations in a bid to seal a bilateral cease-fire agreement to end one of Asia’s longest-running insurgencies.

“Mag-uusap na sila para pagdating ng August, maliwanag na (They will start talking so that come August, issues will be more clear),” Mr. Bello said. “This is the best legacy that our President can give to our country: an enduring and lasting peace for everyone.”

The fifth round of peace negotiations, scheduled May 27-June 1, was derailed after the New People’s Army (NPA), the communists’ armed wing, ordered intensified attacks amid President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s May 23 declaration of martial law in Mindanao in response to the Marawi crisis.

But Mr. Bello said the recent cancellation of peace talks was “not attributed to the [NPA] attacks.”

“The reality is that there is an existing armed conflict. That is the reason why we are talking to end the armed conflict,” he said.

The NPA faction in the southern Mindanao area, where the President comes from, yesterday claimed to have killed seven soldiers in an attack in Monkayo, Compostela Valley on July 1.

In a statement, the NPA also chided Mr. Duterte for calling them “double-faced” for the continued attacks amid the peace talks.

“President Rodrigo R. Duterte is hallucinating if he thinks mere words and not deeds can stop the revolutionary war waged by the New People’s Army and the revolutionary forces in the country,” the NPA said. — Ian Nicolas P. Cigaral

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