Rebels Agree to Truce Talks, Aquino Reports

President Corazon Aquino said Thursday that the Communist Party of the Philippines has agreed to begin talks on a cease-fire in the 17-year-old guerrilla war and named a chief negotiator.

Aquino said she expects to name the government’s negotiators by this weekend. She described the prospective talks as preliminary and did not say what they might lead to beyond a possible cease-fire.

“We have finally gotten word from the top leadership of the Communist Party of the Philippines,” the president told a press conference at Malacanang, the presidential palace, in announcing the first concrete step toward a high-level meeting of the Philippine government with leaders of the insurgency. “They have named Satur Ocampo as one of their negotiators. So I, on my part, will be naming the representatives of the government.”

“Hopefully, we will soon have these talks going between the two camps.”

Aquino did not say when or where the talks might take place.

“I’m not hiding anything. It’s just that now that we have gone this far, I would hate to do anything that might upset the present plans. . . . I would like to be extra careful this time.”

During her campaign against President Ferdinand E. Marcos earlier this year, Aquino pledged to seek a cease-fire and to offer amnesty to the estimated 16,000 Communist-led guerrillas. But she still has not spelled out a specific program for ending the war and meanwhile, the fighting has escalated. Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Fidel V. Ramos said Wednesday that 1,040 people have been killed in the fighting since then. The heaviest action has been in the northern province of Cagayan, the power base of Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile.

“I suppose that when I announced that I would call for a cease-fire, maybe the NPAs (New People’s Army) had to show what kind of force they had. They couldn’t have kept quiet,” she said as an explanation for the stepped-up violence.

Asked whether the Communist leadership can enforce a nationwide cease-fire, Aquino said, “We will know from the negotiations exactly what the leadership is capable of.”

Former Philippine President Diosdado Macapagal called the naming of Ocampo a “salutatory step which moves in the direction of negotiations leading to the resolution of the problem one way or the other.”

Arrested in 1976

Saturnino (Satur) Ocampo, 46, is a former Manila newspaperman who was arrested by the Marcos government in 1976 on a charge of subversion and allegedly tortured. In a celebrated escape last year, he fled from the military guards who were escorting him to a meeting of the National Press Club in downtown Manila.

The political wing of the Communist Party, the National Democratic Front, said in a statement last week that it had chosen a representative for peace talks but did not identify him.

“We have high hopes that our emissary’s efforts will be met with cooperation and good will,” the Communist organization said then.

Joker Arroyo, who was once Ocampo’s lawyer and is now Aquino’s executive secretary, would not give details about how the choice of Ocampo as the insurgent negotiator was relayed except to say that the word came earlier Thursday.

“We are certain of the reliability of the contact,” said Arroyo, who represented several accused Communist Party leaders as a private attorney before joining the government.

Leaders Reported Changed

Ocampo’s present position in the underground Communist leadership is not clear. According to local press reports, the party leadership has recently been shaken up. Its reputed leader, Rodolfo Salas, was reportedly demoted for engineering the party’s boycott of the Aquino-Marcos election. Political analysts say the boycott deprived the party of influence in the Aquino government.

Ocampo denied while in prison that he belonged to the Communist Party, but Arroyo said the fugitive was believed to be on the party’s Central Committee.

Jose Maria Sison, a founder of the party and one of the first political prisoners freed by Aquino, has formed a new political party that will seek a role in a coalition government after the next national election, tentatively scheduled for next spring.

Aquino has said she will never appoint a Communist to her Cabinet, and this presumably extends to members of Sison’s new People’s Party, though Sison has never conceded that either he or his party is Communist.

Asked about that, Aquino said Thursday: “The fact they have responded to my call for peace talks and named one of their emissaries is good enough for me. From there, we can go on to other problems.”

Party literature has demanded that the Philippine military not be represented in any cease-fire talks. Aquino has not indicated whether she will comply with this demand.