MANILA (3rd UPDATE) — The Philippine government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) have agreed to resume peace talks to end a decades-old insurgency, Malacañang said on Tuesday.

The two parties have met informally since 2022 in the Netherlands and Norway for discussions facilitated by the Royal Norwegian Government. They reached a consensus on Nov. 23, 2023, the Presidential Communications Office (PCO) said.

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"Cognizant of the serious socioeconomic and environmental issues, and the foreign security threats facing the country, the parties recognize the need to unite as a nation in order to urgently address these challenges and resolve the reasons for the armed conflict," according to their joint communique posted on PCO's Facebook page.

"The parties agree to a principled and peaceful resolution of the armed conflict," it added.

Both sides said they "acknowledge the deep-rooted socioeconomic and political grievances and agree to come up with a framework that sets the priorities for the peace negotiation."

Meanwhile, Makabayan bloc lawmakers welcomed the resumption of peace talks between the Philippines government and the Communist Party of the Philippines-New Peoples Army-National Democratic Front.

“We fully support the move to explore the peace negotiations again after ex-President Rodrigo Duterte declared an all-out war policy and unleashed state terror on the Filipino people,” Kabataan Rep. Raoul Manuel said in a statement.

"It is good that after six years both panels are going back to the negotiating table and start from where they left off. Such a move should address the roots of the armed conflict to attain just peace," House Deputy Minority Leader France Castro said.

Manuel however explained that the peace talks can be reopened in a conducive atmosphere if the terror designations of the CPP-NPA-NDF are revoked along with the ending of the red-tagging of advocates and organizations, the scrapping of the Terror Law and the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict or NTFELCAC.

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Manuel noted that the NTF-ELCAC was borne out of the failure of the Duterte administration to address the roots of the armed conflict and seriously pursue the peace talks.

Castro meantime thinks its an opportunity to discuss the more substantive issue in the stalled peace talks: the Comprehensive Agreement on Social and Economic Reforms (CASER).

"We hope that the Marcos Jr. administration would stick with the peace negotiations and not to listen to the hawks and peace saboteurs especially those in the NTF-ELCAC," ended Rep. Castro.

The ongoing armed struggle, launched in 1969, grew out of the global communist movement, finding fertile soil in the Philippines' stark rich-poor divide.

At its peak in the 1980s, the group boasted about 26,000 fighters, a number the military says has now dwindled to a few thousand.

Since 1986, successive Philippine administrations have held peace talks with the communists through their Netherlands-based political arm, the NDF.

The 2016 election of former president Rodrigo Duterte -- a self-declared socialist -- brought a burst of optimism for peace talks.

But the talks later devolved into threats and recrimination, with Duterte officially cutting them off in 2017, declaring the group a terrorist organization and accusing them of killing police and soldiers while negotiations were underway.

In recent years, the government has claimed that hundreds of communist rebels have surrendered in exchange for financial assistance and livelihood opportunities.

Last week, President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. issued proclamations granting amnesty to former rebels.

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Deadly clashes still take place in parts of the Southeast Asian country, which is also plagued by kidnap-for-ransom groups and secessionist movements in the southern region.

— With a report from RG Cruz, ABS-CBN News, and Agence France-Presse