Manila Seeks Access to U.S. ‘Secret’ Data

Defense Secretary Fidel Ramos said today that the Philippines should be given total access to all areas of the U.S. military bases in the country, including top-secret sections now off limits.

He told a breakfast forum that the Philippines will seek unrestricted access in talks on the future of the bases, which include Washington’s biggest air and naval bases in Asia.

The bases are formally under Philippine military command, but military analysts have said Manila’s control is nominal.

“The (Philippine) base commander must have access to all areas” but should assure Washington of absolute security regarding any secrets found, Ramos said.

“Being able to visit or inspect or derive information of these areas within the bases--to include the sensitive areas of cryptography . . . is part of the Philippine panel’s demand,” he said.

‘Secret Message’ Areas

“Under the present agreement, there is a lack of access to what they call highly classified cryptographic areas,” Ramos said. “It is my position . . . that the base commander (a Filipino) must have access to all areas.”

Asked what these areas are, the defense secretary said, “I suppose these are areas where secret messages are received and decoded.”

The move, if agreed, would bring the Philippines into potential conflict with its biggest ally over the controversial question of nuclear warheads, which are widely assumed to be stored at Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base and to move through the bases on visiting ships and warplanes.

The Philippine constitution, in a clause that has never been fully defined, bans nuclear weapons in keeping with its national interest. Washington refuses to relax its global doctrine of neither confirming nor denying the presence of nuclear weapons.

3 Months of Talks Seen

Talks on the future of the bases began in Manila in early April and are expected to take up to three months.

Ramos, who is not a member of the Philippine negotiating panel, said Manila wants total access to all areas of the installations during the last two years of the current bases agreement, which expires in 1991.

Later today, the Philippine Senate introduced the “freedom-from-nuclear-weapons bill,” which aims to ban port calls by nuclear-armed or nuclear-powered warships, overflight or landing by aircraft carrying nuclear warheads and the storage of nuclear weapons.

One leading senator said the bill, which has already been signed or publicly supported by 16 of the 23 senators, will be passed by mid-June.

The U.S. Embassy had no official comment on the anti-nuclear bill but an American official, speaking privately, said: “We are taking this very seriously. We are watching it closely.”