Aquino, Rebel Chief Agree on Cease-Fire : President’s Pact With Ex-Priest Covers Tribes Seeking Autonomy

President Corazon Aquino and a maverick Roman Catholic priest-turned-rebel leader agreed Saturday to a cease-fire between government forces and mountain tribes demanding local autonomy.

Aquino flew to the tribal homeland in the Cordillera Mountains, 160 miles north of Manila, where she gave rebel leader Conrado Balweg a Bible and a rosary in a pledge of peace. Armed forces chief Gen. Fidel V. Ramos gave Balweg an M-16 rifle with a yellow ribbon tied around the barrel.

Balweg’s Cordillera People’s Liberation Army until recently was allied with the larger Communist-led New People’s Army, with which Aquino also has been seeking a cease-fire. She worked out a truce eight days earlier with a Muslim rebel group in the southern Philippines.

“The reason for this visit is to show that my government is different from the previous one,” presidential spokesman Teodoro Benigno quoted Aquino as telling Balweg and about 150 of his fighters at a tourist lodge on Mt. Data. “Think of me as your friend. We are concerned about your needs and your problems. We like you to suggest and recommend how we can help you.”

Complain of Neglect

The Cordillera range is home to about 2 million members of various tribes who complain that they have been neglected and abused by the government.

Balweg, a Roman Catholic priest and a member of the Tinguian tribe, abandoned his parish in 1979. Under then-President Ferdinand E. Marcos, a $10,000 reward was offered for his capture dead or alive. The military estimates he has only a few hundred men.

The 95-minute session was capped by a peace ritual called a sipat, in which Balweg gave Aquino a wooden shield and a spear, she gave him a Bible and rosary, and Ramos gave him the ribbon-adorned rifle.

The cease-fire called for both sides to send delegations to peace talks at an unspecified date. Aquino also promised not to resume a project to build dams on the Chico River.

The dam project, begun by the Marcos government in the mid-1970s, triggered the tribal uprising. The tribes said the dams would inundate their homes and burial grounds.

Communist guerrillas soon found support from the discontented tribes. Balweg allied his group with the Communists, but broke from them two months after last February’s revolution that toppled Marcos and put Aquino in office.