NDFP’s Fidel Agcaoili wants to talk, may come home —Duterte

President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the country's law enforcement agencies to let National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) chief negotiator Fidel Agcaoili to come home and talk peace with the government.

Agcaoili, NDFP senior adviser Luis Jalandoni, and NDFP negotiating panel member Coni Ledesma called off plans to be Manila in November to conduct informal talks with the government due to security concerns.

Jalandoni cited the statement of Interior Secretary Eduardo Año that the NDFP officials would be arrested upon their arrival in the country because there of warrants for their arrest.

"I think Attorney Agcaoili has sounded off he was coming again to talk and I told the military and the police just allow him," Duterte said in a speech in his hometown Davao City.

"After all, we’re on a waiting period about the appropriate time to talk about peace. I am not that cruel," he added.

Duterte indicated that he was again open to peace negotiations with the communist rebels months after suspending the talks with the NDFP.

"I suggest that we do not make any demands. We go to the table and to talk about it. And if he approaches something which is not acceptable and I would say, 'No, I cannot accept that,'" Duterte said.

"And if I propose something and [Communist Party of the Philippines founding chair and NDFP chief political consultant Jose Maria Sison] does not relish it then maybe he can go back to Netherlands," he said.

Duterte said he did not "hate" the exiled communist leader Sison despite the exchanges of hostile words they have had in the past.

Duterte and Sison have traded barbs over issues pertaining to the peace talks and the chief executive's health.

"I don’t like his style but I do not hate him. We are friends and we can be friends. Some other time they say I would kill for money," Duterte said.

"But since Sison is my professor, I will kill him for nothing. Except that before he goes to the blue yonder, kindly find time to talk sensible peace," he added.

Duterte earlier opened the possibility of resuming peace negotiations, which the President scrapped in November 2017, on the condition that the communist rebels stop the collection of revolutionary taxes.

Sison, however, rejected the precondition, saying the "people's government" needed financial resources for administration and social programs. —NB, GMA News