MANILA, Philippines - Before forming an elite strike force, the country needs to have highly-trained crisis negotiators to peacefully resolve hostage-taking incidents and kidnappings, a congressman said Saturday.

"We sorely lack professional crisis negotiators. We've seen this not just in the horrible hostage-taking tragedy at Luneta, but also in the kidnapping of foreigners in [Mindanao]," Cavite Rep. Elpidio Barzaga said.

President Benigno Aquino III has ordered the creation of a 200-man-elite strike force that could be deployed nationwide to handle hostage-taking incidents.

Presidential Communications and Operations Secretary Herminio Coloma said the strike force will be composed of 200 men from the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police.

Barzaga said the strike force would be more useful once "put at the disposal of highly trained crisis negotiators."

He said that the Philippine government must create a negotiators' group similar to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Critical Incident Response Group, which, he said, has 340 fully-trained crisis negotiators.

The congressman suggested that the government order the National Bureau of Investigation to lead the formation of a group of highly-trained negotiators.

"Highly-trained negotiators are vital because obviously, if they succeed in their mission, then there won't be any need for a police or military strike force. Or once a strike force is asked to come in as a last resort, the collateral damage will at least be minimized," Barzaga said.

Several experts have said that the 12-hour hostage drama in Manila's Rizal Park turned into a bloodbath because of lapses in the negotiations and the lack of appropriate skills of the negotiators and the police team that assaulted the tourist bus, where an armed ex-policeman held a group of Hong Kong tourists hostage.

The long hours of negotiations failed after the hostage-taker became agitated. The assault team quickly failed to storm into the bus, putting at greater risk the life of the hostages.

Investigations are on-going to determine if some of the hostages were killed by bullets from the police assault team's firearms.