Aquino Vows to Battle Rebels if They Refuse to Give Up Arms

Philippine presidential candidate Corazon Aquino vowed Thursday to use “every available resource of the republic” to battle rebel forces that refuse to lay down their arms.

It was Aquino’s strongest anti-communist statement since President Ferdinand E. Marcos warned that if she wins the election Feb. 7, civil war could result.

Marcos has tried to make Aquino’s position on seeking reconciliation with the leftist insurgents--most of whom she believes are victims of his 20-year-old regime and not committed ideologues--the biggest issue of the campaign.

He has accused her murdered husband, Benigno S. Aquino Jr., of having helped organize the Communist Party of the Philippines, named a number of her advisers as “pinkos and communists” and blasted her policies as dangerously naive.

In a statement from her headquarters, Aquino said of the rebels, “Let us declare once and for all that I will not hesitate to fight them with every available resource of the republic should they refuse to lay down their arms.”

Aquino campaigned Thursday in tribal areas of the northern Philippines, drawing an enthusiastic crowd of 4,000 in the town of Lagawe in Ifugao province, site of the famous rice terraces carved out ot the Cordillera Mountains.

She flew by helicopter to Lagawe on the final day of a three-day swing through Marcos’ “solid north” bailiwicks, donned a tribal skirt, danced to brass gongs with tribal leaders and vowed to help preserve their culture.

The armed forces chief, Gen. Fabian C. Ver, in his first meeting with the foreign press since his acquittal last month in Benigno Aquino’s 1983 murder, was asked if violence by the 15,000-strong Communist New People’s Army could force a cancellation of the election. “As of now, the situation is under control,” he said.

Marcos, at a news conference today, rejected suggestions by Aquino that he might call off the election and reimpose martial law. Marcos said, as he has before, that he would declare martial law only if there were fighting in the streets of Philippine cities.