Aquino Ignores Threats, Visits Troops

Defying threats of an imminent coup and assassination or kidnaping plots by renegade military officers, President Corazon Aquino traveled 600 miles Friday to the Philippines’ southernmost island of Mindanao to address hundreds of troops fighting to put down the nation’s worsening Communist rebellion.

There, she endorsed an armed civilian vigilante group and promised the troops, “I will never abandon you.”

But before the meeting in a jungle camp once held by the Communists, Aquino’s guards disarmed all officers and men as a precaution against any attempt to harm the 54-year-old president.

It was Aquino’s longest trip out of the capital since Aug. 28, when a rebel group within the armed forces staged the most threatening of the six coup attempts against her government since she took power 20 months ago.

Intelligence Documents

Presidential aides said that Aquino insisted on going through with Friday’s journey, the first in a campaign to win military support for her government, despite intelligence documents handed to her this week warning of an attempt by renegade soldiers to kidnap or kill her in Mindanao and seize power in Manila.

After turning over a television set, a video recorder and $2,500 for the construction of new camp housing, Aquino told the 200 soldiers, “I will take care of you and your needs, even though the other day I was warned that perhaps again my life will be endangered.

While Aquino spoke, two helicopter gunships circled the camp, which is located north of Mindanao’s main city of Davao, in a region where Communist rebel activity is still widespread.

Aquino later left the camp to visit the slum district of Agdao in the heart of Davao, where she praised a controversial anti-Communist vigilante group named “The Uprising Masses.” The group, she said, should be a model for the way to rid the country of its estimated 23,000 Communist rebels.

New World Nickname

The Agdao neighborhood was so rocked by fighting between Communists and government troops before the vigilantes were formed that it was nicknamed “Nicaragdao.”

“We look up to you as the example in our fight against communism,” Aquino told the cheering vigilantes, who many human-rights workers in Mindanao have warned could easily become right-wing death squads if unchecked by the government.

Throughout Aquino’s daylong trip, the capital remained normal, contradicting several published reports that a coup would be staged in Manila during the president’s absence.

The reports originated at a clandestine press conference held Thursday at a Manila restaurant by a renegade army colonel, who identified himself only as “Col. Legs.”

The colonel said he was a member of the mutinous military group led by Col. Gregorio (Gringo) Honasan, ringleader in the Aug. 28 coup attempt. “Col. Legs” told reporters that Aquino’s Mindanao trip would be the signal for all of mutineers who got away after the failed August coup to move against the government.

Other Moves Told

There were other government moves Friday to win support for Aquino within the armed forces, which have been deeply divided since Honasan used the government’s apparent neglect of the military as an excuse to justify his uprising against Aquino.

Congress approved a new $9-billion national budget for 1988 that includes a 40% increase in the appropriation for the armed forces. Under the budget, which Aquino is expected to approve, soldiers and officers, who are among the lowest-paid military men in the world, will receive pay raises of up to 60%.

The American government, which is committed to helping arm and supply the Philippine armed forces under a bilateral agreement that allows America to maintain two large military bases here, also is taking steps to shore up the embattled military.

A U.S. Navy ship arrived Friday in Manila and unloaded 10 new V-150 armored personnel carriers for the army. U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Platt said Thursday that, in addition, 150 new troop trucks and 61,000 pairs of combat boots will be delivered next week as part of an increased volume of U.S. military supplies being sent to the Philippines.