MANILA (Reuters) -- The Philippine government and communist rebels will sit down in Norway this week to try to restart talks aimed at ending a three-decade insurgency, House of Representatives Speaker Jose de Venecia said on Wednesday.

Attempts to get the New People's Army (NPA) to lay down its weapons come alongside efforts to rekindle peace talks with the largest Muslim rebel group in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic nation, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Peace deals with both groups have proved elusive in the past but an end to decades of violence would go a long way toward restoring investor confidence in the Philippines.

In a telephone interview, de Venecia said a seven-member government team led by Silvestre Bello will meet in Oslo with 11 representatives of the National Democratic Front, an umbrella for farmers, students and other groups with communist leanings. Norway's government would have an "active mediating role" in the two-day talks that are due to start today, he added.

Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder and chairman Jose Maria Sison, who has been living in self-imposed exile in the Netherlands for more than 15 years, will join the meetings.

The communist panel will be headed by Luis Jalandoni, a former Roman Catholic priest who joined the rebels in the 1970s.

Norway agreed a year ago to host a new round of talks, which were suspended in 2001 after NPA rebels assassinated several local officials in the Philippines. More than 40,000 people are estimated to have been killed in the 34-year Marxist insurgency.

Efforts to restart the peace talks foundered in July when Manila refused a communist demand that the CPP and its armed wing, the NPA, be removed from an international terror blacklist.

"They have agreed to talk without that requirement now," de Venecia told Reuters without elaborating. ---As Communism Wanes, Rebels Fight on -------

Rafael Baylosis, a member of the National Democratic Front delegation, confirmed the informal talks were about to start but indicated the two sides still had chasms to bridge. "The terrorist tag on Jose Maria Sison and on the NPA remains the biggest obstacle for our return to formal talks," he told Reuters. "But this issue would be taken up in Oslo."

Teresita Deles, a presidential advisor on the peace process, said Manila was willing to listen to the National Democratic Front but was not ready to make firm commitments on the possible removal of the NPA rebels from the blacklist.

"We hope that we could find common ground to restart the formal talks," she told Reuters.

De Venecia said a draft agreement prepared by the government sought an end to hostilities and the disbanding of rebel units.

In return, the government was likely to declare an amnesty for the guerrillas, whose numbers have dwindled to less than 10,000 from as many as 25,000 in the late 1980s.

Manila would also encourage the Marxists "to join the democratic and political mainstream like communist parties have done in Europe", de Venecia said.

"They can compete in the battlefield of democracy," he added.

The CPP was legalized in 1992 but the NPA continued guerrilla attacks in rural areas.

The rebels are accused of regularly ambushing army patrols, assassinating political opponents and former members, and extorting money in the form of "war taxes".

The local Marxists have been the most resilient rebels of their kind in Southeast Asia, surviving the demise of communism in the former Soviet bloc and the rebirth of market economies in Asia's two largest communist states -- China and Vietnam.

Southeast Asian states such as Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia defeated communist insurgencies decades ago.