DAVAO, Philippines » Promises by the Philippines’ popular new president to tackle poverty and corruption could boost upcoming peace talks with rebels and make irrelevant the country’s communist insurgency, which turned 42 on Sunday, the government’s negotiator said.

Guerrillas of the New People’s Army—one of Asia’s most resilient Maoist forces, enduring decades of military crackdowns—celebrated the anniversary in their jungle camps with a vow to intensify attacks.

But behind the scenes, negotiators on both sides have already agreed to resume talks after six years—fruits of the political goodwill and optimism that followed the May election of reformist President Benigno Aquino III.

Aquino represents "the new dynamics" of the Philippines, chief government negotiator Alexander Padilla told The Associated Press this week.

Padilla said that Aquino, who enjoys support across the political spectrum as the son of revered democracy icons, would inject honesty, good faith and a strong advocacy for reforms and human rights into peace talks that have often been undermined by mistrust and weak public support.

"This could be the best opportunity for the other side to really come up with a political settlement," Padilla said of the talks, scheduled for February.

Engendered by the Cold War in the late 1960s, the rural-based insurrection led by the underground Communist Party of the Philippines has emerged as this Southeast Asian nation’s most serious security menace, stoked by decades of poverty, agrarian unrest, government corruption and misrule. Five presidents have failed to crush the Maoist rebellion, which has killed at least 120,000 combatants and civilians.

The party dates from its split from an older Communist group at a conference Dec. 26, 1968, in northern Pangasinan province. That date also was the 75th birthday of China’s Mao Tse-Tung.

Washington has blacklisted the Communist Party and its armed wing, the 5,000-strong New People’s Army, as terrorist organizations, blaming them for separate attacks that killed four American military personnel in the 1980s.

The rebels walked away from peace talks brokered by Norway in 2004, suspecting then-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s government of instigating their inclusion on U.S. and EU terrorist lists.

Since assuming office, Aquino has begun tackling pervasive government corruption and human rights violations blamed on state security forces that have helped breed the insurgency.

Padilla said the president understands the rebels’ concerns. His mother, former President Corazon Aquino, led a 1986 "people power" protest that ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos, whose martial law declaration in 1972 provided the fodder for the rebel movement as students, farmers and the middle-class swelled its ranks to some 25,000.

After restoring democracy, Corazon Aquino opened talks with the rebels, but they soon broke down. Battle setbacks, factionalism and surrenders have sapped their strength, but they still claim a presence in each of the Philippines’ 81 provinces.

The NPA operates a shadow government in areas under its influence, conducting trials—and sometimes executions—of policemen and village officials accused of harming people. The rebels also collect "revolutionary taxes"—and punish business establishments refusing to pay.

Aquino won rare praise from the rebels when he recently ordered the dropping of charges against 43 health workers who claimed they were abused in military custody after being arrested as suspected insurgents 10 months ago.

Padilla said the rebels—faced with the collapse of many communist states that supported and inspired them, and with a popular new national leader seen as addressing social inequities—may soon fade to irrelevance if they persist on waging a protracted war.

He noted that even hardline leftists have been elected into Congress after abandoning their armed struggle.

Rebel spokesman George Madlos said oppressive conditions in the country that have fostered poverty, corruption and rights abuses had remained under Aquino.

"We will continue to wage the revolution because it’s right and we’re in a position to intensify attacks," Madlos said in a statement this week, ahead of Sunday’s anniversary.

Despite sporadic fighting, including the killing of 10 army soldiers in a Dec. 14 rebel ambush, both sides have agreed to resume formal talks Feb. 15-21 in Norway’s capital, Oslo. They also agreed to a Christmas truce through Jan. 3.

The military, meanwhile, has softened its counterinsurgency strategy, which has been linked to extrajudicial killings of hundreds of left-wing activists and suspected rebel sympathizers.

The new six-year program unveiled last week seeks to wean away civilian communities from the rebels and includes support of advocacy groups from outside the government in addressing human rights concerns.

Political analyst Ramon Casiple said it showed that a part of the 120,000-strong military has agreed to adhere to human rights safeguards.

"It’s no longer the body count approach. This is a war for hearts and mind," Casiple said. "The rebels should realize that the ground is shifting."

The Communist Party has criticized the new plan. In a statement this week, it said it "will keep on engendering the revolution until the entire rotten, puppet, reactionary system is brought down."