MANILA: The Philippine government and Maoist-led National Democratic Front (NDF) rebels began talks in Hong Kong on Wednesday aimed at restarting formal negotiations to end more than 40 years of conflict. The two-day meeting is the first since President Benigno Aquino put together a new peace panel in October to handle talks with the Maoist guerrillas. “This is the very first step to lay a good foundation for the talks,” Teresita Quintos Deles, the president's peace adviser, told reporters. The meeting was “a getting to know you” and there were no formal talks. “There is no agenda,” said Deles, who did not attend the meeting. She said the two sides have agreed not to issue a joint statement after talks on Wednesday and Thursday. More than 40,000 people have died in the Maoist rebellion, which began in the 1960s, hobbling investment and development in resource-rich areas of the country. Peace talks stalled in August 2004 when Washington and some Western European states blacklisted the group's military arm, the New People's Army (NPA), as a terrorist organisation. The NPA, which the military says has about 4,000 fighters, has been blamed for attacks on and extortion of mines, plantations and other businesses in rural areas. Although both sides have said they want to return to peace talks, ending one of the world's longest-running insurgencies remains far from certain. The rebels have not abandoned demands for the government to free all political prisoners, including 11 men they say are part of peace negotiations, and the health workers. The government is also trying to restart negotiations with Muslim separatists to end a separate long-running insurgency in the south. Meanwhile, police in the Philippine capital fired tear gas and used water cannons from fire trucks to break up a rally on Wednesday by hundreds of motorized rickshaw drivers against a government order banning them from major roads. Police Superintendent Felipe Lafuente Cazon said protesters threw bottles and stones at officers trying to clear about 100 rickshaws that the drivers used to barricade one of Manila's busiest streets. In another incidence, suspected communist guerrillas seized a passenger bus Wednesday then opened fire on pursuing government forces in a running gunbattle that killed at least four people in a province east of Manila. At least five New People's Army rebels boarded the bus in Quezon province's San Francisco town after aborting a plan to attack its police station due to the presence of government security forces, regional military spokesman army Col. Generoso Bolina said.
