Departing Aquino Proclaims U.S. Visit ‘Runaway Success’

Philippine President Corazon Aquino left the United States late Tuesday, saying she was “physically exhausted but emotionally exhilarated” after an official eight-day trip that she called “a runaway success.”

“I am just overwhelmed by the kind of reception I have received here in the United States,” Aquino told reporters in San Francisco in her first and only press conference of the visit, which also took her to Washington, Boston and New York. “It has exceeded all of my expectations.”

Aquino said the major success of her trip was that it “served to reassure the United States that the Aquino government is here to stay” and that she was able to explain to the American people her ascent to power, which she said was less a true revolution than it was “the story of a modern-day miracle.”

Calls From Reagan, Bush

President Reagan, who met privately with Aquino last week, telephoned her just hours before she left for Manila on a Philippine Airlines commercial flight. He told Aquino that “if there is anything he can do for me, I should just call him up,” she said. Vice President George Bush also telephoned her Tuesday afternoon with the same message, she said.

Immediately after the Reagan call, Aquino delivered a luncheon speech to 1,600 business and political leaders of San Francisco in which she referred to Reagan as “a great Californian . . . a man it would be a pleasure to work with.”

Aquino also used the speech before the World Affairs Council, the Commonwealth Club and the Asia Foundation to assess a week in which she has addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress, the U.N. General Assembly, American bankers, academicians, businessmen and religious leaders and paved the way for a significant economic bail-out plan for her economically devastated country.

‘Economic Scoreboard’

In detailing what she called “the economic scoreboard on the trip,” Aquino said that “Washington showed where its heart was” when the House approved a $200-million supplemental aid bill just hours after her congressional address. She said the economic ministers from her Cabinet who accompanied her will remain behind to negotiate a rescheduling of the Philippines’ $26-billion foreign debt.

The aid bill has yet to be approved by the Senate, however, and Aquino conceded Tuesday that she was unable to secure any firm, new commitments from American investors, although that was among her priorities during the U.S. visit.

“We must wait and see,” Aquino said. “Businessmen are not like governments. They are much too penny-wise to sign agreements on the spot.”

The best that Aquino could report on her efforts to secure better trade terms that would allow the Philippines to export more goods to America was a commitment from the Reagan Administration of “a high-level review of our trading relationship.”

‘Not Here to Beg’

“We have not come here to beg,” Aquino insisted. “The purpose of this trip was not to get the Philippines back in line at the trough of American assistance. That would go against the grain of what has been happening in my country.”

Rather, she said, her trip--all of which was financed by the U.S. government--was meant to forge a closer friendship between the two nations and to explain the February coup that brought her to power and drove President Ferdinand E. Marcos into exile.

In a direct slap at Marcos and his wife, Imelda, whose personal shopping trips during state visits to America were legendary, Aquino said: “My predecessor had an easy way of measuring achievement on his trips here. He came with two shopping lists. One was his wife’s for New York’s Fifth Avenue shops, and the other was for guns and aid in Washington.”

Now, Aquino said, “We are through with shopping lists. Our election and revolution were about pride as well as democracy.”

‘Revolutions Breed Doubts’

Nonetheless, she added, “revolutions breed doubts, not for the participants but the observers.” And Aquino told the business and political leaders, whose ranks included many wealthy potential investors, that “mixed with the exhilaration that Americans felt at the events in the Philippines was a concern about stability.”

“And if I can sum up the single most important success of this trip in one sentence, it is this: The message has struck home to everyone that the Aquino government is here to stay and, with its success, so is democracy in the Philippines.”

On Tuesday, Aquino also reiterated her commitment to use force, if necessary, to end the Communist insurgency that has left thousands dead in the Philippine countryside in the last 17 years.

“Americans now understand,” she said in her speech, “that I will defend democracy against all challenges by whatever means it takes--by reconciliation and peace when the enemies of democracy will listen; by arms when they won’t.”

‘Resort to Force’

During a question-and-answer session after her speech, Aquino’s tone was even harsher. “If these people do not listen to our peaceful attempts, then we will just have to resort to force,” she said of the rebels.

When asked during the press conference whether she fears that such rhetoric and a perceived new closeness between her and Reagan could trigger a backlash from the political left in the coalition that brought her to power, Aquino said: “I don’t think there will be any difference. Everyone knows this is where I stand from the beginning.

“They (the left) have no excuse whatsoever to hit at me.”

However, during Aquino’s appearance Tuesday morning at the Berkeley campus of the University of California, a radical Filipino student group called the Revolutionary Workers League was distributing leaflets charging that Aquino’s attempts to reconcile with the insurgents are “a lie” and that she wants from the rebels “not a cease-fire, but a surrender.”