The NPAs pretending to be members of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) arrived at the Botolan, Zambales police station, northwest of Manila, last Friday with a woman who said she had been raped, the police report said.

As the woman was reporting the supposed crime, more "investigators" arrived, supposedly to help.

But once inside the police station, the so-called lawmen and the supposed rape victim announced that they were members of the NPA and took the four policemen at the station hostage.

The imposters then stole five rifles, ammunition, and office equipment before fleeing in two vehicles, the police said.

Chief Supt. Alejandro Lapinid, Central Luzon (Region 3) police chief, said the NPAs, who were clad in NBI jackets, subdued and handcuffed the four policemen without firing a shot.

"These officers should have learned their lessons from past NPA raids," Lapinid said, adding the provincial police chief was removed and the entire 24-member Botolan police force were sent for re-training.

Lapinid said three men posing as law enforcement agents came looking for the town’s police chief to coordinate an anti-crime operation and disarmed the unsuspecting police officers.

A dozen more rebels, wearing the same black jackets, followed and ransacked the police headquarters, fleeing 10 minutes later with five assault rifles and communications equipment.

Last January, about 50 rebels wearing Army uniforms stormed a police station on the southern island of Mindanao, seizing nine assault rifles and four handguns.

The Philippines, Washington’s closest security partner in Southeast Asia, estimated the NPA membership at more than 7,000, down from a peak of more than 25,000 in the mid-1980s.

The NPA, which has killed an estimated 40,000 people, is active in 69 of 79 provinces and has delayed development by terrorizing rural communities and traders with violence and "revolutionary war taxes."

Peace talks with the communists, brokered by Norway, have stalled since August, 2004 when Manila refused to help persuade the United States and some Western European states to remove the NPA from terrorism blacklists.

University professor Jose Maria Sion, founder and leader of the Communist Party of the Philippines, said the government of President Arroyo should be blamed for "killing" the peace negotiations in Oslo, Norway.

"For several years already, the Arroyo regime has committed so many breaches of joint agreements and put up so many obstacles that have totally made impossible the resumption of formal talks," Sison said in a statement on Saturday.

"The only way these negotiations can be resurrected is for the broad united front and the mass movement to oust the Arroyo regime and install a new government willing to pursue the negotiations."

Sison, who has been living in exile in The Netherlands since the late 1980s, also criticized Arroyo for ordering arrests of people involved in the peace talks after the military claimed to have foiled a plot to overthrow her government last month.