Aquino and Enrile Try to Resolve Differences in ‘Friendly’ Meeting

President Corazon Aquino met with Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile for two hours on Tuesday night in an attempt to reconcile the deepening rift between the two key members of the Philippine government’s ruling coalition.

A government spokesman today did not disclose the details of the meeting, which he said took place at the house of a university president close to the president, but a Cabinet minister who was present said the meeting was “very friendly. Everything was worked out.”

Enrile showed signs that the conflict was over during today’s Cabinet meeting. One minister said Enrile was “all smiles; very conciliatory, and participated more than usual.”

Speech by Aquino

Aquino was expected to discuss the meeting during a speech today to a women’s sorority group.

The meeting, the first in months between the two leaders who took power after the February coup that drove President Ferdinand E. Marcos into exile, came after a day in which the poles between the political left and right sharpened.

Hundreds of soldiers used barbed wire barricades, cars with mounted machine guns and an armored personnel carrier to stop more than 20,000 peasants from marching in protest on the presidential palace Tuesday.

At the same time, Enrile declared that liquidation squads of the Communist New People’s Army have infiltrated the capital, and he warned that “time is running out very fast” for the government to put down the insurgency.

Enrile, without mentioning the rift between him Aquino, said in a speech at a Manila military camp that “our countrymen are cowering in fear” in the countryside because “there is not adequate government authority to protect them.”

“We can no longer ignore these cries for help,” said Enrile, who has been hinting in recent weeks that he and others in the military may take overt action to force a tougher counterinsurgency policy on the Aquino government.

Enrile has taken this tough stance at a time when a number of Cabinet ministers are calling for his resignation. At the same time, there is growing dissent among the 200,000 men in uniform over Aquino’s decision to conduct cease-fire talks with the rebels while holding back the military.

While the peasants were marching Tuesday, several figures on the political left threw their support behind the movement to drive Enrile from the Cabinet, a movement Enrile has said is secretly orchestrated by the radical left.

“We would like to see him get out of the Ministry of National Defense, but we would like more to see President Aquino get him out of the Cabinet entirely,” said Joe Castro, a leader of the leftist People’s Party and one of the organizers of Tuesday’s protest march. “That would be a very good way of showing that President Aquino really is the commander in chief and that she isn’t afraid of her military.”

Asked why his group chose Tuesday to march on the palace, Castro said it was the 14th anniversary of a land-reform decree signed by Marcos, who was ousted from the presidency last February. He said the marchers wanted to protest the Aquino government’s failure to undertake meaningful land reform.

The demonstrators shouted, “This is no different than under the Marcos dictatorship.”

Castro said he believes that the troops turned out Tuesday were intended more as a precaution against an Enrile-backed coup than as “an act against the people.”

Scene Recalled Marcos Era

The scene around the palace recalled the last years of the Marcos government. Every street leading to the palace was barricaded with six-foot-high rolls of barbed wire. Fire trucks with water cannons were drawn up at some locations, and the troops carried rifles and tear-gas grenade launchers.

Military and police commanders at the scene offered no explanation for the high level of security, the highest since Feb. 25, the night Marcos fled.

A key member of Aquino’s Cabinet said at a press conference Tuesday that the Cabinet ministers who have been calling on Enrile to resign have agreed among themselves to a period of “self-imposed restraint on comments regarding Minister Enrile--nothing inflammatory.”

Aquilino Pimentel, the minister of local governments who was the first to call on Enrile to resign, said he hopes the rift between the president and the defense minister can be solved.

“Probably this matter is better settled between the president and Minister Enrile privately,” Pimentel said.

Urges Resignation

Despite his pledge of self-restraint, Pimentel continued to attack Enrile at the press conference. He called again for Enrile’s resignation and, noting that most of Enrile’s criticism of the Aquino government has focused on its counterinsurgency policy, said:

“If he’s griping against the way the government is dealing with the insurgency problem, we have to tell him the Philippines have seen the way he and Mr. Marcos have dealt with the insurgency for many years, and their way does not seem to have worked.”

Enrile was a Cabinet minister under Marcos for nearly 20 years before he led the rebellion against him.