Peace talks a 'make-or-break' situation, says Duterte

President Rodrigo Duterte and Jose Maria Sison (File Photo)
President Rodrigo Duterte and Jose Maria Sison (File Photo)

PRESIDENT Rodrigo Duterte vowed Thursday, May 24, to keep his pledge to allow Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Maria Sison to safely leave the country if the peace negotiations, which he described as a "make-or-break situation," fail anew.

But if Sison returns to the country after he is escorted out, Duterte vowed to kill him.

"I will tell him, 'You s** of a b****, do not ever return here. I will kill you.' If nothing happens anew, I will really tell him (Sison), 'Do not ever, ever return again to this (country). I will kill you. You've killed so much of my soldiers and policemen. So you deserve it,'" Duterte said in another profanity-laced speech.

The President, a former student of Sison, issued the warning in a speech delivered in his hometown in Davao City.

Sison, who has been on self-exile in the Netherlands since 1987, brushed aside Duterte's threat, diismissing it as a mere "term of endearment, as in some American comedies."

The CPP founder said he would rather be optimistic and said he appreciated the "hard and productive work" of both parties to resume the formal peace negotiations and make substantial progress.

"I will not reply to (Duterte) in any hostile manner, unless he actually wrecks the work already done by the negotiating panels to prepare the resumptoon of formal peace talks," Sison said in a statement released Friday, May 25.

"It seems to me that in using strong words, he is eager to resume the peace negotiations rather than to block them," he added.

Duterte said he has given the communists a window of two months to finalize a peace agreement.

"I have invited Sison to come home. He has agreed. I gave him a window of two months, very small. It will be a make-or-break situation for us," Duterte said.

"If we are able to understand each other, good. But if not, I will see to it and will personally maybe escort him to the airport. If nothing happens for two months, I will allow him to go out. I will not arrest him because that's my word of honor," he added.

Informal back-channel talks between the government peace negotiators and communist leaders started early May to pave the way for the formal dialogue.

The talks will resume six months after the President scrapped that negotiations through Proclamation 360, issued on November 23, 2017. (SunStar Philippines)

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