Philippine communist rebels raid police station

MANILA, Mar 18 (Reuters) Philippine communist rebels posing as law enforcement agents raided a police headquarters northwest of Manila and fled with assault rifles and radio equipment, a police general said today.

Alejandro Lapinid said the Maoist-led New People's Army (NPA) rebels yesterday subdued and handcuffed four police officers without firing a shot during the raid at Botolan town.

''These officers should have learned their lessons from past NPA raids,'' Lapinid said, adding the provincial police chief was removed and the entire 24-member police force in Botolan were sent for re-training.

In January, about 50 rebels wearing army uniforms stormed a police station on the southern island of Mindanao, seizing nine assault rifles and four handguns. yesterday, the raiders wore jackets labelled ''National Bureau of Investigation.'' Lapinid said three men posing as law enforcement agents came looking for the town's police chief to coordinate an anti-crime operation and disarmed the unsuspecting police officers.

A dozen more rebels, wearing the same black jackets, followed and ransacked the police headquarters, fleeing 10 minutes later with five assault rifles and communications equipment.

The Philippines, Washington's closest security partner in southeast Asia, estimates the NPA membership at more than 7,000, down from a peak of more than 25,000 in the mid-1980s.

The insurgency of Maoist-led guerillas, which has killed an estimated 40,000 people, is active in 69 of 79 provinces and has delayed development by terrorising rural communities and traders with violence and ''revolutionary war taxes''.

Peace talks with the communists, brokered by Norway, have stalled since August 2004 when Manila refused to help persuade the United States and some Western European states to remove the NPA from terrorism blacklists.

DEAD PEACE TALKS University professor Jose Maria Sion, founder and leader of the Communist Party of the Philippines, said the government of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo should be blamed for ''killing'' the peace negotiations in Oslo.

''For several years already, the Arroyo regime has committed so many breaches of joint agreements and put up so many obstacles that have totally made impossible the resumption of formal talks,'' Sison said in a statement today.

''The only way these negotiations can be resurrected is for the broad united front and the mass movement to oust the Arroyo regime and install a new government willing to pursue the negotiations.'' Sison, who has been living in exile in the Netherlands since the late 1980s, also criticised Arroyo for ordering arrests of people involved in the peace talks after the military claimed to have foiled a plot to overthrow her government last month.

Arroyo imposed a week-long emergency rule until March 3 to stop a conspiracy by her political opponents, rogue troops and communists to setup a junta.

Sison said the government fabricated the plot to justify the continued crackdown by Arroyo on her perceived political foes, such as lawmakers, journalists and activists.

Police yesterday arrested two leaders of the anti-Arroyo group Black and White Movement, including a former member of her cabinet who resigned in July last year and joined calls for her to step down.

Corazon ''Dinky'' Soliman, a former social welfare secretary, was freed before midnight by a prosecutor pending investigation on police complaint of illegal assembly when she and 20 others gathered at a public park near the US embassy in Manila.

REUTERS CS SP1150