LUCENA CITY—Communist Party of the Philippines founding chair Jose Maria Sison on Friday said that President Rodrigo Duterte’s threat to kill him if peace talks failed was a way of expressing endearment.

“Duterte has repeated so many times the threat to kill me that sometimes I surmise that the expression ‘kill’ has actually become a term of endearment, as in some American comedies,” Sison said in a statement.

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On Thursday, Mr. Duterte threatened to kill Sison, his former professor, if the government’s proposed peace talks with the communists failed.

The President again invited Sison to come home and gave him two months to discuss peace with the government.

However, if the revival of the peace talks failed again, Mr. Duterte said he would personally escort Sison to the airport but would tell him not to return to the country again because he would kill him.

No word war

“I will really tell him: ‘Son of a b****, don’t you ever come back here again. I will really kill you,’” Mr. Duterte said.

The President also blamed Sison for the death of soldiers and policemen during the more than four decades of communist insurgency in the country.

But Sison, who is based in The Netherlands, avoided another word war with Mr. Duterte.

“I will not reply to Duterte in any vitriolic manner, unless he actually wrecks the work already done by the negotiating panels to prepare for the resumption of formal peace talks,” said Sison, who also serves as chief political consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines. —DELFIN T. MALLARI JR.

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