Rely Less on U.S. Trade, Aid, Envoy Advises Manila

U.S. Ambassador Stephen W. Bosworth said Wednesday that the Philippine government should become less dependent on the United States in the future and begin looking to other nations for aid and trade markets to rescue its battered economy.

“Both we and the Philippines will be better off in the future if the Philippines is able to broaden somewhat its focus on the rest of the world,” Bosworth said in an interview.

“We (the United States) are not, by ourselves, going to be able to provide the Philippines everything it needs--nor should we even try.”

Bosworth is leaving Manila next week after serving as the U.S. envoy here for three of the most turbulent years of Philippine history. He said he is confident that the future relationship between the United States and a nation that was its possession for half a century until 1946 will remain close, despite recent criticisms of American policy here by President Corazon Aquino and her Cabinet.

Reacting to a recent series of anti-American pronouncements by the Aquino administration and by leftist political opposition leaders--the sharpest criticism of Washington since Aquino took power a year ago--Bosworth said: “In a relationship as complex as this, there are going to be, on an almost constant basis, things that come along that are irritants. . . . But I don’t attach much importance to that.”

Last weekend, Aquino, perhaps for the first time since taking office, found herself personally irritated by that relationship, charging that Washington was offering only cheap advice instead of promised aid.

In a speech Sunday ordering her military to deliver her “a string of victories” against the country’s increasingly bloody Communist rebellion, Aquino lamented, “I have asked our military ally for the hardware to achieve these objectives, but they have given advice instead.”

During an informal session with reporters at her presidential palace two days before, Aquino specifically criticized recent congressional testimony by Richard L. Armitage, the U.S. assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs.

Although most of Armitage’s March 17 testimony was complimentary to Aquino personally, the defense official compared her administration to that of deposed President Ferdinand E. Marcos by saying: “The Aquino government has also regrettably failed to develop a comprehensive counterinsurgency plan that integrates military, political, economic and social programs.

“The Aquino administration believes that they can rely almost exclusively on symbolic political acts to cure the insurgency. They continue to cling to the now-forlorn hope that the insurgents will fade from the scene.”

Armitage charged that under Aquino’s policies of peace and reconciliation, the Communist New People’s Army had increased in strength by 9% to 24,430 armed rebels and that their political reach has increased by 21%, now influencing or controlling a full one-fifth of the country’s 41,000 villages.

Armitage further criticized the Philippine military. He charged that deficiencies in the Philippine armed forces are “massive” and that “logistic support and maintenance capabilities remain critical.”

Anti-U.S. Feeling Growing

Armitage’s testimony came against the backdrop of increasing anti-American sentiment within the Philippine military.

The Times reported last month that less than half of the $10 million in emergency military medical aid that President Reagan personally promised Aquino last September has actually arrived--much of the delivered aid consisting of useless items such as crates of aspirin and arctic ski parkas. And several senior commanders have questioned whether the United States is actually trying to help the Philippines or simply pave the way for direct U.S. involvement in counterinsurgency efforts.

During a closed-door meeting last Friday between Aquino and middle-level military commanders, one officer told the president that Armitage “has no business telling us what to do,” according to Aquino’s press secretary, Teodoro Benigno.

Benigno added that the president herself was “obviously peeved” by the reports on Armitage’s testimony.

On Wednesday, Ambassador Bosworth said that much of Armitage’s testimony, in which the defense official also praised Aquino as “the most popular president in modern Philippine history,” had been misinterpreted. He said Armitage, who told Congress that the biggest threat to the Philippines is “complacency” by the U.S. Congress, was actually trying to “galvanize” Congress into allocating more military aid to the Philippines.

U.S. Backing ‘Unequivocal’

As for the backlash, Bosworth said: “U.S. support for Mrs. Aquino and her programs is very unequivocal. . . . That is not in question. And I am confident the Aquino government knows that.”

But the Armitage affair came on the heels of a series of incidents nationwide that have raised anti-American protests, all of them widely reported in the lively Manila press.

The latest incident came to Bosworth’s doorstep Tuesday, when a handful of demonstrators surrounded the ambassador’s car outside the U.S. Embassy here and started barking.

The group was protesting a March 17 incident in which seven Filipino boys, who were picking through a garbage dump on Clark Air Base, the large U.S. installation north of Manila, were attacked and badly bitten and scratched by American guard dogs.

The mauling was reported on the front pages of all 24 Manila daily newspapers, and many followed up with reports on the Tuesday protest, in which signs declared, “Dog-Gone It, Uncle Sam, Your Dogs Have Gone Too Far,” and “Uncle Sam, How Many Dogs Did You Sic on Filipino Kids Today?”

Reacting to the incident, Aquino told reporters, “We are human beings, and they should treat us so. The rights of all human beings should be respected. And there is no reason why dogs should be used to go after any human being.”

U.S. officials said the incident is under investigation.

CIA Role Reported

The dog attack followed unconfirmed reports published extensively here last week that the CIA is stepping up clandestine counterinsurgency activities in the Philippines. That charge triggered equally strident comments from both Aquino’s local governments secretary and the director of the country’s equivalent of the FBI.

“I don’t think they should meddle in our counterinsurgency problem,” declared Jaime Ferrer, whose department of local governments is trying to develop a comprehensive counterinsurgency plan.

National Bureau of Investigation Director J. Antonio Carpio added that if the Americans interfere directly in the insurgency, “our country would be converted into another Vietnam.”

During the interview Wednesday, Bosworth appeared to agree that it should be the sole responsibility of the Aquino administration to frame its counterinsurgency policies.

He said he believes that neither the Filipinos nor the American people would permit direct American intervention in the armed Communist rebellion here, and he added that he is optimistic that the Aquino administration eventually will resolve the conflict in its own way.

Optimism in Business

Economically, Bosworth said, the Philippines reversed its negative growth in mid-1986, “and there is a distinct attitude of optimism in the business community.”

And politically, he added, the government will further strengthen its position against the Communist insurgents after a national legislature and a network of popularly elected local governments are created in separate elections this May and August.

Since the military coup, widely supported by civilians and backed by the Roman Catholic Church, that brought Aquino to power, Bosworth said, there has been a fundamental change in the way government works in the Philippines. He added that Washington also should broaden its Philippine policy from what he called “micromanagement” during the Marcos regime.

“I think steadily this government and the country are acquiring a degree of stability--a bottom, if you will,” Bosworth said. As the Aquino government stabilizes itself, Bosworth added, it should become less reliant on America and more reliant on closer neighbors and on itself for its future progress.

“We will remain . . . the principal foreign partner of this country,” he said, “but it is not a zero-sum game. I think this will happen, and I think it has begun to happen.”