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By Anthony Vargas Reporter
THE Armed Forces on Friday lauded
the European Union’s (EU) move to keep the Communist Party of the
Philippines (CPP) on the list of foreign terrorist organization.
Lt. Col. Bartolome Bacarro, AFP
Public Information chief, said there’s no doubt that the CPP and
its founding leader Jose Mari Sison should remain on the list.
Bacarro told reporters at a press
briefing in Camp Aguinaldo on Friday that the EU’s move to tag the
CPP as terrorists was “very welcome because there’s no question
about that.”
The EU declined to remove the CPP,
its armed wing New People’s Army (NPA) and Sison from the list of
terrorist organizations.
It said that it refuses to delist
the three groups from the list until such time that they would be
able to prove they are no longer engaged in terrorist activities.
The US government has also
included the CPP-NPA and Sison who is living in Netherlands in its
own list of foreign terrorist organizations along with the Abu
Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI).
Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr., AFP
chief, proposed the resumption of stalled peace talks with the
communist movement during the summit on extrajudicial killings last
month.
He said the peace talks would
resume immediately after the CPP-NPA agrees to a three-year
ceasefire with the AFP.
The communist has pulled out from
formal peace negotiations with the government three years ago after
the government failed to remove them from the foreign terrorist
organization list.
The CPP and the 7,400-strong NPA
have been waging four decades of protracted war against the
government that has claimed the lives of thousands of people.
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