Aquino, Cabinet Take Up Issue of Insurgents : Back From U.S. Trip, President Gets Report From Military Chief

President Corazon Aquino, returning Thursday from her eight-day visit to the United States, plunged immediately into a welling Cabinet debate on whether she should get tougher with the Communist insurgents here.

Three hours after her arrival, she met with government leaders to brief them on the American trip and to receive a report on the fighting from Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, the armed forces chief of staff.

She told a press conference later that she heard recommendations from Vice President Salvador Laurel and others on the sputtering peace talks between the government and the Communists.

“We will be discussing it,” she told the reporters. “. . . We will decide on a timetable.”

Olive Branch or War?

In Washington, Aquino told a joint session of Congress that she intended to “explore the path of peace to the utmost.” Only if the talks failed, she said, would there be a “moral basis for laying down the olive branch . . . and taking up the sword of war.”

In her absence, Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile had questioned the Communists’ sincerity. Their rejection of an Aquino-proposed 30-day cease-fire, he said, “to me means that they are not really interested to talk peace but merely want to use the ongoing peace dialogue as a period of rest and consolidation of their forces.”

On Thursday, the president declined to discuss the Cabinet debate, telling reporters she wanted first to study the Ramos report. She said she will then meet with the military leadership and the government’s peace negotiators.

Ramos reported earlier that 1,089 people were killed in insurgency-related incidents between March 1 and Sept. 15. He said 70% of the encounters were initiated by the Communist New People’s Army and that the military “will hit hard” at rebels “who persist in their program of violence and terrorism.”

Aquino said the army remains in an “active defensive” posture during the peace effort and implied that any change in strategy will await her review of the situation. During her absence, a number of NPA attacks and assassinations were reported by the armed forces.

The president was more willing to discuss political than military issues at the brief press conference. She said here, as she had in San Francisco, that she will not form a political party of her own to put up candidates for the local and national elections expected early next year.

She ran for president in February against now-exiled Ferdinand E. Marcos as the standard-bearer of UNIDO, Laurel’s party, and the PDP-Laban coalition, her main base of support. Now UNIDO and PDP-Laban are taking separate political paths in preparation for the 1987 elections, and some analysts have suggested that Aquino might want to form another party to build support for her presidency in the new Congress.

Rejecting the idea for now, Aquino made it clear, however, that she is not abandoning the partisan arena.

“I’ll have a hand in the selection of candidates,” she told reporters. “Maybe I’ll just call them Cory candidates.”

The president completed the long flight from San Francisco with a low-key ceremony at Manila International Airport. Descending a long staircase from her Philippine Airlines 747 jetliner, she reviewed a small honor guard and briefly addressed the welcoming crowd of government officials and foreign diplomats.

Recounting her political and economic talks in Washington and New York, and describing the sympathy and understanding she was shown by her American hosts, she challenged Filipinos to strive for stability and recovery.

“The main effort is ours to do, so that the greater honor will be ours again,” she said. “Let us get on with it then, for what else is there to wait for? The time for talk and hesitation and criticism is over. The time for action is now.”

Her motorcade from the airport to Malacanang Palace wound through the streets of Manila past large, exultant crowds and banners of welcoming, including one proclaiming her “Our Heroine.”

Aquino’s American trip was thoroughly covered by the Philippine news media, and her speech to the U.S. Congress, which drew three standing ovations, was the talk of Manila.