Phase-Out Predicted for U.S. Bases at Clark and Subic : Philippines: Most contentious negotiations yet loom later this month. Congress is stalling on the money.

U.S. Ambassador Nicholas Platt’s voice was only fair but his meaning was clear when he shed his coat and picked up a guitar to sing the blues--literally--to several dozen diplomats and Philippine President Corazon Aquino.

“I’ve got the base review blues,” he warbled. “Blue as I can be.”

The figures make me stagger;

The compensation is so high;

They’re asking me for billions;

I think I’m gonna die.

Platt’s five-verse blues at a weekend Malacanang Palace luncheon last month for diplomats from 55 countries was no easy tune. The United States and the Philippines are facing the most contentious negotiations yet over the future of two of the largest and most strategic U.S. military bases overseas, Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base. With preliminary talks expected this month, key officials in Washington and Manila now privately predict a 5- to 10-year U.S. phase-out from the bases. The new relationship would include more joint-use arrangements such as those common at American bases in NATO countries and Japan.

“We know the question is not if we leave,” one U.S. official explained. “It’s when and how.” So for now, both sides are playing politics.

In Manila, a growing number of influential clergy members, mainstream politicians and newspaper editorial writers have demanded that Washington either quit the bases or pay far more than the $481 million that President Ronald Reagan pledged in 1988. The current two-year leases expire in September, 1991.

The criticism grew to a chorus after President Bush authorized American F-4 Phantom fighter-bombers from Clark to pin down rebel planes on the ground at the height of the Dec. 1 coup attempt. Critics charge that Aquino is now beholden to Bush for helping save her government.

But U.S. officials concede that their negotiating position has been complicated because Congress so far has refused to appropriate the full $481 million in cash, investment guarantees, military assistance and other aid promised two years ago. That executive agreement committed the White House only to use its “best efforts” to get the money from Congress.

“The basic problem is the U.S. government is not coming up with enough money, even what was promised,” U.S. Embassy spokesman Jerry Huchel said. “We keep saying, ‘Wait, we’ll try.’ But we can’t even say we’ll succeed.”

Huchel said no hard figures exist, but he estimates that Congress may renege on $40 million to $60 million of the total pledged. “The budget is tight,” he said. “It’s a real problem.”

Philippine officials do not disagree. Aquino said last month that the shortfall will be a “threshold question” when the negotiators meet. Meanwhile, she stressed the relaxation of tension between Washington and Moscow and pointedly pushed a University of the Philippines study on converting the bases to civilian use.

On the American side, Ambassador Platt has said the U.S. government could remove its forces within a year but that it would be “disastrous” for the Philippine economy. In Washington, military officials have leaked documents proposing major cuts here and have suggested moving operations to Guam, Japan and Singapore.

Clark and Subic together have long been a political lightning rod. Although surveys indicate that most Filipinos support the bases, many educated Filipinos consider them a vestige of U.S. colonialism.

The Pentagon has long described Clark and Subic, both about 50 miles north of Manila, as the key to forward strategic deployment in the Pacific arena. Subic is home to the U.S. 7th Fleet and provides a key base for ship repair, training, hospitals and supplies. Clark is home to U.S. Air Force tactical fighter wings that cover the Philippines, Southeast Asia and part of the Indian Ocean.

About 40,000 U.S. troops, military dependents and civilian employees are stationed at the two giant bases and at four smaller military facilities, including a mountain camp for rest and relaxation.

Military strategists say the bases are crucial for guarding strategic sea lanes, including three narrow straits that provide access to oil and commerce from the Indian Ocean and the Middle East. With the Cold War apparently ending, the officials now downplay the long-trumpeted Soviet threat.

“Why are we out here?” a Navy spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Mukri, asked aloud during a recent tour of Subic. “We’re not necessarily here to counter the Soviets. We’re a trading nation. Someone cuts our trade, we die.”

Moreover, supporters argue that the bases are key to the Philippine economy. The United States is the nation’s second-largest employer, with about 79,000 Filipinos on the payroll and about $500 million in annual salaries and compensation. All told, the embassy estimates that the bases directly and indirectly account for 7% of the Philippines’ gross national product.

U.S. officials also insist that the bases help provide security. One diplomat noted, for example, that only 44 of 248 ships in the Philippine navy and coast guard are seaworthy, and those 44 only barely so.

“They can’t and don’t operate out of sight of land,” he said. “This country is naked.”

Critics counter that the U.S. jets deployed in the December coup attempt were the first foreign force used here since World War II. “People’s eyes were opened that these weapons could be used against the Philippine people, not just against foreign invaders,” said Aquino’s estranged vice president, Salvador H. Laurel.

Indeed, critics say, the bases are a “magnet” for nuclear attack, and their existence only fuels the 20-year-old Communist insurgency in these islands. They blame the bases, moreover, for the bars, prostitution, AIDS and other social ills that have proliferated nearby.

And even some supporters of Washington say Aquino compromised her country during the coup. “It was demeaning,” said Olangapo Mayor Richard Gordon, whose city depends on the Subic Bay facility.

Converting the bases will not be easy or cheap. A University of the Philippines study last October proposed a variety of uses, from a new international airport to new housing settlements, but noted that “the actual feasibility of these transfers has yet to be studied.”

U.S. officials are skeptical. At Subic, Mukri said the agreement would allow the Navy to remove “anything that is not tied down.”

The Filipinos would inherit “the piers, but not any of the equipment,” he said. “Not the cranes, not the lights, not the generators, not the trucks. The floating drydocks are gonna float away.”

So for now, the political sparring continues. At the weekend lunch, Platt said he composed his “Base Review Blues” during the lengthy 1988 negotiations.

“The blues were invented by people who felt they were in trouble,” he said, picking at his guitar. “This was no exception.”