(Adds comments from former head of election commission)

By Manny Mogato

MANILA, March 8 (Reuters) - Philippine communist rebel group the New People's Army (NPA) is using left-wing political parties to try to win more seats in May's congressional and local elections, the president's security adviser said on Thursday.

In a forum with foreign correspondents and diplomats, Norberto Gonzales also said the Maoist-led rebels had been training death squads to assassinate President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and other officials, including himself.

"They want me dead before the elections. They are training a group of assassins -- snipers," Gonzales said, adding the rebels are fingering him for a spate of political murders the past year that human rights groups have blamed on the military.

Gonzales said left-wing political organisations must not be allowed to win seats in the lower house of Congress because of suspicions they were using state funds to promote an armed rebellion in the country.

Allegations of cheating, which she denies, have hung over Arroyo since the 2004 presidential vote and a former head of the election commission, the body in charge of overseeing voting and counting, called for clean polls in May to restore the Philippines' reputation.

"The election period hangs like a dark cloud over the local economy. Even when many businessmen expect it to be uneventful, many are still wary of it," Christian Monsod told a conference of Philippine business leaders on Thursday.

SECURITY THREAT

Since 1969, more than 40,000 people have been killed in one of the longest-running communist insurgencies in the world.

"These party-list organisations are under the direct influence of the communist party," said Gonzales, who heads a small socialist party aligned with Arroyo's ruling Christian Democrat party coalition.

Gonzales said the administration had identified at least five left-wing groups aligned to the NPA that are seeking 10 to 15 seats in the lower house, increasing their representation from six seats currently.

He said the communists would also try to expand their control over local governments positions in the May 14 election. Left-wing parties currently control less than 10 percent of nearly 18,000 local posts.

Arroyo sees the NPA as the Philippines' biggest security threat and last year declared all-out war on the rebels, who are largely based in rural areas and engage the police and military in deadly tit-for-tat battles.

Peace talks between the two sides collapsed in 2004 when Washington and some European states put the NPA on their terrorism blacklists. The group has over 7,000 fighters and is active in 69 of 81 provinces.

Gonzales said the Philippines will label the NPA as a terrorist organisation once a new anti-terror measure, signed into law this week, comes into effect later this year.

"It's shameful that the world is already proscribing them as terrorists and we have not and they are our terrorists," he said.

Left-wing political parties deny that they are linked to the NPA and have accused the military of killing hundreds of their members in extrajudicial executions. The government has denied the charge.

Teodoro Casino, one of three congressional members of left-wing group Bayan Muna (Nation First), accused Gonzales of harassment on Thursday.

"Gonzales and his boss are the gravest threat to Philippine representative democracy."

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