Gunmen kill senior Philippine communist leader

MANILA, May 29 (Reuters) Three gunmen riding a motorcycle shot dead a Philippine communist leader facing rebellion charges for his role in an alleged plot to oust President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, officials said today.

Sotero Llamas, 55, was attacked in the central town of Tabaco, 550 km southeast of the capital, Manila, and was declared dead on arrival at a nearby hospital, a senior regional police official said.

Llamas had been shot in the face, Chief Superintendent Victor Boco said, adding that the communist leader had received death threats before the attack.

''We've sent out our investigators to look for witnesses who could help identify the gunmen,'' Boco told reporters.

State prosecutors filed rebellion charges this month against Llamas and 40 other leaders of the communist movement for an alleged conspiracy with rogue troops to oust Arroyo in February.

Military intelligence officials said Llamas was a member of the central committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines and regional commander of the Maoist-led New People's Army.

He was also a consultant to peace talks, brokered by Norway since 2001, between the communist rebels and the government.

The government said some rogue lieutenants had met senior NPA leaders in Batangas province south of the capital before Llamas was arrested in February. It linked the party leadership with the foiled coup, including rebels living in exile in the Netherlands.

Negotiations to end nearly 40 years of communist insurgency that has killed 40,000 people stalled in August 2004 when Manila declined to help convince Washington and some Western European states to remove the rebels from terror blacklists.

Soldiers caught Llamas in 1995 when he was wounded in a gun battle in Bicol, but he was freed when peace negotiations moved into high gear in the late 1990s.

Llamas emerged from the underground to organise and mobilise leftist rallies in Bicol and flirted with local politics, running and losing the gubernatorial race in his home province, Albay, in the May 2004 elections.

Human rights advocates and leftist groups say the government was behind the wave of murders and disappearances of nearly 100 journalists and activists since Arroyo assumed power in 2001.

Arroyo's security officials defended the government's rights record, saying the killings could be part of an internal purge in the communist movement.

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