Philippines renews truce offer to Maoist rebels

MANILA, Jan 24 (Reuters) - The Philippines has renewed an offer to communist rebels to accept a ceasefire deal as a step to restarting peace talks on ending a four-decade rebellion, an aide of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said on Thursday.

Ricardo Saludo, secretary of Arroyo's Cabinet, told reporters the government "is heeding the Church's call for peace", and once again called for a truce to create an atmosphere conducive to talking peace.

"We call on the rebels to accept a ceasefire that would end the bloodshed and lay the foundation for sincere, productive negotiations toward a lasting settlement of the communist rebellion," Saludo said.

Active in 69 of 81 provinces across the archipelago, the communist New People's Army (NPA) rebels have been waging protracted guerrilla warfare to overthrow the government since the late 1960s.

The conflict has killed 40,000 people and stunted economic development in rural communities, scaring potential investors as the rebels exact "revolutionary taxes" on plantation, logging and mining companies.

Peace talks between the government and the rebels, brokered by Norway, stalled in August 2004 when Manila declined to help remove the communist group from terrorist blacklists of the United States and some Western European states.

Last year, the government attempted to restart the talks by offering a ceasefire and declaring a six-month amnesty programme for rebels willing to lay down their weapons.

But the NPA rejected the peace overtures, imposing their own sets of conditions before agreeing to return to negotiations.

On Tuesday, bishops from the Roman Catholic and various Protestant churches offered to facilitate a new round of talks, asking the two sides to drop all preconditions to end one of the longest running communist insurgencies in the world. (Reporting by Manny Mogato, editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)