Communist guerrillas would declare a unilateral cease-fire if the Philippine Senate rejects a treaty extending the U.S. military presence for 10 years, the exiled rebel chief said Saturday.
Jose Maria Sison, in an interview with the Philippine Daily Inquirer, also denounced the draft treaty agreed to last month by U.S. and Philippine negotiators.The agreement allows Washington to turn over the giant Clark Air Base and four smaller facilities after a 1947 lease expires Sept. 16, but retain until 2001 Subic Bay Naval Station for an annual compensation of $203 million.
Foreign Secretary Raul Manglapus, chief Philippine negotiator, said the agreement would be initialed next week.
Sison, who is believed to still be the chairman of the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines, which he founded in 1968, was interviewed in the Netherlands.
"Even if the Aquino government is treasonous enough to initial a draft treaty retaining the U.S. military bases, the National Democratic Front would still declare unilaterally a cease-fire when the trend is clear that the Senate is going to reject the bases treaty," Sison said.
The NDF is an umbrella organization of 12 underground groups led by the CPP and its military arm, the 17,000-member New People's Army.
"So there is an encouragement for the patriotic senators to stand up against the bases treaty," said Sison, who was freed by President Corazon Aquino from 10 years in military prison in 1986.
But he said he does not know how the senators would vote and that some of them might succumb to U.S. pressure in exchange for "campaign funds."