Enrile Doubts Success of Talks With Insurgents

Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile declared Wednesday that it would take “a miracle” for the coming peace talks between the Philippine government and the leaders of the Communist insurgency to succeed. Secretary of State George P. Shultz, here for talks, endorsed the use of military force against the rebels if the negotiations fail.

Shultz, after meetings with Enrile, President Corazon Aquino and the military chief of staff, Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, lauded the Philippine government’s talk-and-fight strategy for dealing with the insurgency.

Shultz was responding to Enrile’s comments Wednesday, the military’s hardest line yet on the civilian Cabinet’s efforts to reach a cease-fire, and ultimately a peaceful settlement, with the guerrillas. The Marxist-inspired guerrilla war has left tens of thousands of Filipinos dead in the last 17 years.

Comparing the Philippine counterinsurgency plan to that of the U.S.-backed regime in El Salvador, Shultz said the Aquino government is trying to combat the rebels by instituting political and economic reforms while preparing for a military showdown.

Refers to Duarte

Shultz said that Enrile, Ramos and other military leaders are right to say, “as President (Jose Napoleon) Duarte has been doing in El Salvador, (that) there is strength and there is continuity and there is an ability to deal with this militarily if we must.”

“I see a strategy here that is not that much different from our own strategy in meeting the Communist threat in our own hemisphere,” he said.

Shultz also endorsed the Philippine military’s opposition to a proposal by the insurgents and some members of Aquino’s government that any political solution include power-sharing with the Communists.

A senior State Department official said later that Philippine officials made clear that the government wants “to be able to demonstrate that they went the extra mile” in search of a peaceful settlement even if the chances of success are slim. The U.S. official said Shultz considered such a policy to be “realistic.”

Enrile Doubtful on Accord

Several of Aquino’s top civilian advisers have said privately in recent weeks that the president is prepared to use military force if the negotiations fail.

Asked whether reconciliation with the rebels is possible, Enrile told a public forum, “My answer is an honest no. . . . Those who are not ideologically committed to a Marxist position of seeking power to attain their Marxist objectives could perhaps be won; but the ideologues, the committed ones, if they are true Marxists . . . my personal honest opinion is a resounding no.”

Enrile added that a political settlement with the hard-core rebels, whom the military now estimates at 17,200 armed regulars, would be possible only “if we talk about the possibility of a miracle.”

Ramos, too, has taken a harder public stance against the insurgency since Shultz arrived for four days of meetings with Philippine government leaders and the foreign ministers of six pro-Western Southeast Asian nations, who are gathered in Manila for an annual conference.

Conflict Intensifying

Ramos, who along with Enrile led the military and civilian rebellion that drove former President Ferdinand E. Marcos into exile last February, told reporters on Tuesday that the Communist New People’s Army is intensifying its war in the countryside. He was highly critical of suggestions by liberal members of Aquino’s Cabinet that a proposal to share power with the Communist Party be included in negotiations that the government has said it plans with Communist Party leaders.

“We only have to examine the pattern of Communist struggle in Southeast Asia,” Ramos said. “The creation of their coalition has resulted in the collapse of democratic systems.”

Ramos added that the insurgency is “more serious” now than ever before, and he compared guerrilla units to “termites” that are invisibly “eating up the main foundations” of the national government.

Shultz, while agreeing that the Aquino government’s promised negotiations should not include any proposal of “power sharing,” disputed suggestions that the insurgency is growing and that the Communists are winning the war in the countryside.

Lunch With Aquino

Included in Shultz’s daylong meetings with Philippine government officials was a two-hour lunch on the terrace of President Aquino’s private home, which the Philippine government described as “marked by great conviviality and warmth.” A U.S. official called it “very, very good and very warm.”

Shultz and Aquino have become close friends in the four months since she came to power, and a Philippine government spokeswoman said Shultz promised the Philippine leader that he will press Congress for approval of an additional $150 million in U.S. aid. At his press conference, Shultz predicted early approval for the $150 million.

That appropriation would be in addition to the $200 million in economic support funds Shultz signed over to the Philippines in a ceremony Wednesday morning. The funds represent several installments of money that the United States agreed to pay for the use of two large military bases north of Manila.

U.S. officials said the bases did not even come up during Shultz’s meetings with Aquino, Enrile and Ramos. Shultz said the United States is in no hurry to resolve the future of the bases after the current lease runs out in 1991.

Removal of the bases is one of the demands of the insurgents in the proposed peace talks. The Communist leaders have also said that any settlement would have to include the withdrawal of the military from the countryside, drastic reductions in government defense spending, a thorough investigation of alleged current and past abuses by the military, land reform and a major Communist role in the new government.