MANILA- Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced Monday a unilateral ceasefire with communist rebels who are waging one of Asia’s longest insurgencies, and urged them to reciprocate.

Duterte made the announcement in his first “State of the Nation Address” to Congress as he laid the groundwork for peace talks with the communists that are due to begin in Norway next month.

“To stop violence on the ground (and) restore peace, I am now announcing a unilateral ceasefire,” Duterte told lawmakers, as he called on the rebels to do the same.

The communist rebellion has killed about 30,000 people since the 1960s.

The communists’ armed wing, the New People’s Army, is believed to have fewer than 4,000 gunmen today, down from a peak of 26,000 in the 1980s, according to the military.

But it retains support among the deeply poor in rural areas, and its troops regularly kill security forces while extorting money from local businesses.

Dutere’s predecessor, Benigno Aquino, revived negotiations soon after taking office in 2010 but shelved them in 2013, accusing the rebels of being insincere about finding a political settlement.

The talks collapsed after his government rejected the rebels’ demand to release scores of their jailed comrades, whom they described as “political prisoners”.

Duterte, who took office on June 30 and counts exiled communist rebel leader Jose Maria Sison as a friend, had previously offered to release some political prisoners.

His aides have already held preliminary talks with Sison and other senior communist leaders, during which they agreed to resume the peace negotiations next month.

More foreign drug convicts could imminently face the firing squad in Indonesia after authorities said Monday they were ready to carry out a new round of executions following a hiatus.

Nationals from Pakistan, Nigeria and Zimbabwe are expected to be put to death alongside Indonesians soon, but officials say no Europeans or Australians will face the firing squad in the third round of executions under President Joko Widodo.

Indonesia sparked international outrage with its last batch of executions in April 2015 when it put to death seven foreigners, including two Australians, but Widodo has insisted Jakarta is fighting a war against drugs and traffickers must be harshly punished.

Authorities began stepping up preparations in recent days. A Pakistani drug convict was transferred Monday to Nusakambangan prison island off Java, where executions take place, and Indonesian authorities have notified Pakistani officials his execution is imminent.

An Indonesian woman sentenced to death for drugs was transferred to the island at the weekend.

Security was tight Monday around Cilacap, the port city on Java island that serves as a gateway to Nusakambangan, with many police officers deployed and access for visitors closed for the coming week.

“All the preparations have been made,” said Molyanto, prisons head in Central Java province, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.

Neither Molyanto nor the attorney-general’s office, which oversees executions, would confirm when the convicts would face the firing squad or who would be put to death.

The office previously said that executions would resume after the Muslim Eid holiday, which fell at the start of July.

Pakistani deputy ambassador in Jakarta, Syed Zahid Raza, said his embassy was notified by the Indonesian foreign ministry Friday that the Pakistani man, Zulfiqar Ali, would be executed in the near future.

“The embassy of Pakistan has approached all the concerned high officials to convince them that it was not a fair trial for Mr. Zulfiqar,” he said in a statement. Rights groups have claimed Ali, sentenced to death in 2005 for heroin possession, was beaten into confessing.

A Filipina, Mary Jane Veloso, who was pulled from the last executions will not be included in the upcoming round as a legal process related to her case is ongoing in the Philippines, said the attorney-general’s spokesman Mohammad Rum.

Several Europeans on death row in Indonesia for drug offences look set to escape the looming executions, including Frenchman Serge Atlaoui and British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford.

Indonesia – which has some of the toughest anti-drugs laws in the world – executed 14 drug convicts, mostly foreigners, in two batches last year.

The second round caused the most serious diplomatic tensions, with Canberra temporarily recalling its ambassador from Jakarta due to the execution of the Australian drug smugglers, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

VIENTIANE – Southeast Asian nations Monday ducked direct criticism of China over its claims to the South China Sea, in a diluted statement produced after days of disagreement that gives the superpower a diplomatic victory.

The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) avoided mention of a ruling by a UN-backed tribunal which had rejected China’s claims and infuriated Beijing.

Instead, ASEAN repeated that it was “seriously concerned” by “land reclamations and escalation of activities” and called for “self-restraint” in the strategic waterway.

The contested sea, through which some $5 trillion in shipping passes annually, has been a source of increasing tension between China and its Southeast Asian neighbours as well as the United States.

Regional diplomats are gathered in the Laos capital Vientiane for an ASEAN summit that has been dogged by the flashpoint issue of territorial claims.

It is the first time key players – including US Secretary of State John Kerry and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi – have met en masse since a UN-backed tribunal a fortnight ago rejected Beijing’s claims to vast stretches of the sea.

ASEAN’s leading envoys have spent days wrangling over how to respond to the ruling amid splits, acrimony and fears the bloc is faltering in its response to the major security challenge of the day.

Staunch Beijing ally Cambodia has been accused of scuppering efforts by the bloc to unite in a call for China to abide by the tribunal’s verdict.

Four ASEAN members – Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei – have competing claims with Beijing over parts of the South China Sea.

Most members want to keep pressure on China over its campaign of island-building.

But ASEAN operates on a tradition of consensus diplomacy, meaning a single nation can have an effective veto if it disagrees.

A statement was finally released on Monday after hours of last-minute talks finally cut through the impasse – but it tacked away from criticism of Beijing.

“We just averted another potential debacle,” one Southeast Asian diplomat told AFP, referring to a 2012 summit in Cambodia at which the bloc for the first time failed to issue a joint statement because of disagreements on the South China Sea.

Another diplomat, when asked if Monday’s statement had been watered down, said: “It’s a compromise statement. And in a compromise someone has to give way.” The decision will be a boon to China, which has angrily rejected the international tribunal.

Earlier China’s Foreign Minister Wang heaped praise on Cambodia – to whom it ladles out aid and loans – for holding out against fellow members.

State-run Xinhua news agency said Wang “highly appreciates Cambodia’s efforts to uphold justice over the South China Sea issue”.

“We will not allow external forces to cause turbulence in the region by hyping up the so-called South China Sea arbitration,” Wang said in a clear reference to Washington.

Kerry arrived in Laos on Monday and is expected to hold talks with Wang later in the day.

The US says it takes no position on the territorial disputes but argues for free sea and air passage through what it considers international waters.

It has also called on Beijing to accept the tribunal ruling.

Tensions on the Korean peninsula are also likely high on the agenda for both China and the US.

Pyongyang carried out its fourth nuclear test in January, followed by a series of ballistic missile tests including one last Tuesday.

In response Seoul announced plans to host a US missile defence system on its territory, sparking fury in Pyongyang and concern in Beijing.

North Korea’s newly minted Foreign Minister Ri Yong-Ho is attending the Laos gathering, a rare moment at which senior officials from Washington, Beijing and Pyongyang will be in the same room.

Earlier in the day he met Wang for talks at the sidelines of the meeting.

Ri, a former nuclear negotiator and party princeling, is making his debut appearance at a major international gathering.

Washington has played down the likelihood of talks between the two countries during the summit.

But the summit would still give Kerry an opportunity to confront North Korea on its weapons programme, a US official told reporters before Kerry’s visit.

VIENTIANE – International tension over maritime disputes in the South China Sea should be toned down, China’s Foreign Minister said on Monday, after a “deeply flawed”international court ruled against Beijing’s expansive claims in the South China Sea.

The UN-backed Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague handed an emphatic legal victory to the Philippines in the maritime dispute earlier this month.

The court ruling was built on flimsy legal grounds, Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters in the Laos capital of Vientiane on Monday.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) supported China’s stance that disputes should be resolved bilaterally, he said after meeting ASEAN foreign ministers on Monday.

To that end, ASEAN backed plans for the Philippines and China to hold direct talks on their dispute, he said. “The page had now been turned,” on the issue after the tension caused by the court ruling, he said.

The relationship between ASEAN and China should not be defined by the maritime issues, he added.