Communist insurgency ending in RP

Communist insurgency ending in RP

MANILA (AFP): Philippine President Fidel Ramos yesterday
announced plans to switch most counterinsurgency duties from
military to police personnel, saying the fight against communist
rebels was in its "final chapters."

"We are closing the final chapters of our more than 20 years
of struggle against insurgency," he said, apparently referring to
the movement led by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)
and its military arm, the New People's Army (NPA).

In his speech to mark the 59th anniversary of the armed
forces, Ramos said the number of villages where the CPP were
active and exerted influence had dropped from about 1,000 in 1993
to only 700 now.

He said this represented only 1.7 percent of the country's
villages.

He credited this to the end of the Cold War which had weakened
the appeal of communism, as well as to government reforms
including an amnesty program extended to insurgents.

Ramos said the weakening insurgency should allow the military
to concentrate on civic action, engineering projects,
environmental protection and disaster relief to develop the
economy, as well as on external defense, which it has largely
ignored while devoting its resources to fighting guerrillas.

But he said the transition would require the modernization of
the ill-equipped military and urged congress to pass a bill this
year allocating more funds for modernization of the military.

Ramos also confirmed that he had approved guidelines for the
transfer of the military's counterinsurgency duties to the
national police on Jan. 1. But he added that the military would
remain in charge of such duties in several designated large
areas.

These include the southern island of Mindanao and its
surrounding islands as well as the mountainous region of the
Cordilleras and several other underdeveloped islands and regions,
Ramos said.

He did not say why these areas were exempted from the transfer
although many of them are strongholds of the NPA or other armed
groups like Moslem gunmen.

Despite the exemptions, Ramos said the transfer showed there
was "an improved peace posture and climate," in the country.

Although the communist guerrillas' ranks have dwindled in
recent years from a record high of about 25,000 during the 1980s
to about 8,000 this year, they still stage sporadic attacks on
the military.