Situation Critical, Aquino Told; Urged to Call Council

The Philippine armed forces chief of staff, declaring that loyal troops narrowly averted a civil war in crushing last week’s attempted coup, called on President Corazon Aquino on Tuesday to convene the National Security Council immediately because the situation is still critical and further rebellion is possible.

The council, a joint military-civilian policy-making body that Aquino has never called into session, was created at the urging of the chief of staff, Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, and then-Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile after an earlier coup attempt last year. Its membership includes Ramos, several other military leaders and most of the Cabinet.

In calling for the National Security Council to meet, Ramos was apparently indicating a desire to broaden the decision-making process, giving not only the military but also conservative governmental figures more of a voice in handling the Philippines’ latest crisis.

Ramos, speaking at a press conference Tuesday, conceded that the armed forces’ fighting capability has been “temporarily diminished” by the uprising that began last Friday. In addition to at least 40 dead and 260 wounded, he said, his entire organization was left deeply divided.

The military, he said in a two-page statement to the Philippine people, was one of “the main losers in this episode, not only in terms of personnel and materiel losses, but especially our republic’s capability to confront the armed threat against our people.”

Then, addressing the 150,000 officers and men of the armed forces, he said, “Let us consolidate our ranks.”

Justifying his call for a National Security Council meeting, Ramos said the government has been “too narrow-minded” in its response to the crisis.

‘Time Is of the Essence’

“The stability of the nation and its capability to defend and secure itself is our highest national interest and must be addressed without delay in a nonpartisan manner,” Ramos said. “All other issues must give way. . . . Time is of the essence.”

He warned that the assault on the presidential palace and the occupation of two military camps by more than 1,000 rebel troops under renegade Col. Gregorio Honasan were only “initial assaults” and that further rebellious activity could be expected.

Ramos said a document declaring that a provisional military government had been established north of Manila in central Luzon had exposed the rebels’ real intent, which he said was to kill President Aquino and set up right-wing military junta.

Copies of the document began to appear Sunday. It bears no signature and is dated the day before, Aug. 29. People known to be close to deposed President Ferdinand E. Marcos delivered copies to news organizations.

Military officers close to the rebel leaders strongly doubted the document’s authenticity. Gen. Ramos said he had no evidence to support the document’s statement that a military government had actually been established. He said it was “a last-ditch effort to generate support for a lost cause.”

Col. Honasan, who planned and led the coup of February, 1986, that drove Marcos into exile, is not known to have issued any official statement since last week’s uprising. Nor has he been seen in public since he escaped just before dusk Friday, along with hundreds of his followers, in the course of an air strike and artillery barrage on his stronghold at Camp Aguinaldo.

Ramos refused to speculate on the rebels’ whereabouts. He denied reports attributed to top aides of President Aquino that he has ordered his troops to shoot Honasan and his fellow officers, who said in broadcast statements at the outset of their uprising that they were rebelling because the government and the military leaders were ignoring the needs of junior officers and their troops.

In contradicting the shoot-to-kill report, Ramos said: “You will never hear anything like that from Ramos. . . . I am one who has been very constitutional and very legal in my approach.”

Senior commanders close to Ramos said his statement to the nation was of critical importance. Ramos, they said, feels that Aquino and her advisers are underestimating the urgency of the crisis facing the government--especially the increasing fragmentation of the military.

Ramos said in his statement that government efforts undertaken Monday to raise the soldiers’ pay, to improve medical care for them and generally upgrade the quality of their lives “merits the highest priority.”

“But the equally vital requirement,” he went on, “is the maintenance of an effective capability to fight on the many fronts in which the Armed Forces of the Philippines is now engaged.”

Ramos, a West Point graduate and a recognized expert in psychological warfare, said that the leaders of the Philippines’ 18-year-old Communist insurgency are the principal beneficiaries of the crisis. And the Communist insurgency continues, he said, to be the most potent threat to the country.

“The present crisis” in the armed forces is directly responsible for Friday’s uprising, he said. Although Ramos did not say so, Col. Honasan is known to be a fervent anti-Communist, and he has sharply criticized the government for appearing to favor the Communist rebels over its own servicemen. Yet Friday’s uprising, Ramos said, “is the greatest disservice that Honasan and his advisers have done against our people.”

Aquino, meanwhile, discussed the failed coup with recipients of a peace award in the guest house at the presidential palace.

“Perhaps there is still so much lacking in all of us,” she said. “We have to re-examine ourselves first of all, because it is so necessary to be true to ourselves before we can hope to change the things around us.”

The president, who is widely known for her policy of nonviolence, said she ordered the assault on Camp Aguinaldo only after dozens of civilians had been killed in the crossfire between rebels and loyal troops.

Her Son Among Wounded

“I was so sure hundreds could have been killed or wounded,” she said, “not realizing that my own son was one of those who had been wounded.”

Her only son, Benigno S. Aquino III, was shot in the arm and neck, possibly accidentally, by the rebels when he and his bodyguards drove past the palace on their way to the family home on a side street nearby.

Aquino’s press secretary, Teodoro Benigno, said that like Gen. Ramos he doubts the authenticity of reports that the rebels have established a revolutionary government.

Any such junta, he told reporters, would have to be “in effective control of a sizable amount of the territory of a country.” If it does “not control one square meter of territory, then it is a phantom junta,” he said.

Asked whether the government could crush the rebellion completely before the weekend, Benigno replied, “I think it has already been crushed, but there are still pockets of resistance, just like a typhoon that has gone, leaving behind a little rain.”

Picture on Page 2. Ramos is seen as part of problem, Page 12.