Conferees Agree to Cut Philippine Aid Request

House and Senate negotiators, searching late Thursday for a symbolic gesture to prod President Ferdinand E. Marcos into making reforms in the Philippine military, agreed to chop $30 million from a Reagan Administration military aid request for the troubled nation.

The Pentagon wanted to pump $100 million into the Philippine armed forces during the next fiscal year to help the Marcos government fight a rapidly growing Communist insurgency that threatens the stability of the country as well as the fate of two strategic American military facilities based there.

Opponents of the Marcos government have long sought removal of the Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark Air Base. But suggestions that Congress might reduce military aid, which Philippine government officials consider part of a rent package for the facilities, has triggered threats that the Marcos government may try to force Washington to renegotiate the bases treaty or close the facilities entirely.

Key to Economy

However, Western diplomats doubt that Marcos would dare such drastic action because the bases are the second largest employer in the economically strapped country, where at least a quarter of the population is out of work and many other people are seriously underemployed.

Under the agreement reached by House and Senate conferees, the Philippines will get $70 million in military aid during the fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, as well as $110 million in economic assistance. The military money would be restricted to the purchase of non-lethal equipment such as boots, uniforms, radios and transportation gear, which the Pentagon says is in woefully short supply.

The proposal was attached to a $12.7 billion foreign aid package that was approved early today by the joint panel. The aid included $3 billion for Israel and $2.1 billion for Egypt.

The Democratic-controlled House had initially passed a more restrictive package that would send only $25 million in military aid to the Philippines but $155 million in economic aid.

Rep. Stephen J. Solarz (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee that oversees Philippine aid requests, said he reluctantly agreed to increase the House military figure despite reservations about whether it will embolden Marcos to reinstate Gen. Fabian C. Ver, his cousin and key ally, as armed forces chief of staff.

Ver, blamed by U.S. critics for waste, inefficiency and corruption that decimated Philippine military morale, is temporarily on leave from his post while on trial on conspiracy charges in the 1983 murder of popular opposition leader Benigno S. Aquino Jr. Marcos has said he will reinstate Ver if the general is acquitted, a prospect that many Western analysts consider likely given Marcos’ degree of control over the courts.

In other action, the panel:

--Agreed to authorize $27 million in humanitarian aid to the anti-Sandinista contras fighting the Nicaraguan government, although the conferees stipulated that neither the CIA nor the Pentagon should have any role in distributing the money.

--Softened a provision approved by the House that would have made future military aid to El Salvador contingent on a presidential certification that the country is making progress in curbing human rights violations, such as the activities of right-wing death squads. Under a compromise, the bill now states only that future aid will be given with the expectation that rights violations will be curbed.