Philippine Base Talks Likely to Be Combative : Defense: Secretary Cheney says he would like to keep two key facilities but only on favorable terms. President Aquino declines to meet him.

Staking out a firm early negotiating posture in talks on the future of two key U.S. military bases in the Philippines, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said Sunday that the Pentagon wants to keep the bases, but only on terms favorable to the United States.

Cheney, who is in Honolulu at the start of a two-week visit to Asia, said: “Obviously, we are interested in renewing the base rights agreement, (but) it’s only going to happen if both parties can reach acceptable understanding. It has to be on the basis that the Filipinos want us there and it is in accordance with terms we can accept.”

The base negotiations, certain to be the most contentious ever between the two countries, are scheduled to begin next month.

Philippine officials are entering the talks in an equally combative mood. President Corazon Aquino said Sunday that she will not meet with Cheney when he arrives in Manila on Feb. 19.

In a weekly radio address, she complained about recent statements by U.S. officials that appeared hostile to her government. Senior officials in Washington have questioned the Aquino government’s ability to handle a continuing leftist insurgency and to run public services free of corruption.

A Cheney spokesman, while playing down the significance of the Aquino controversy, noted that Cheney’s schedule had been changed so that he will spend two rather than the previously planned three days in the Philippines.

He will meet there with Defense Minister Fidel V. Ramos and visit U.S. naval and air forces.

Cheney indicated that the Pentagon was planning for the possibility that U.S. troops stationed at Subic Bay Naval Base and Clark Air Base would be forced out, if not in this round of talks then within the next few years.

“We obviously will stay only as long as we’re wanted,” Cheney said Friday before leaving Washington. “We hope to be able to come to an acceptable agreement, but it obviously has to be acceptable to both parties, both the U.S. and the Philippines, or we will have no other choice but to depart.”

Other defense officials have said privately that the United States could move the ships and aircraft to new or existing bases in Japan, Guam or Singapore.

A senior Pentagon official noted pointedly on Friday: “It’s not that they’re irreplaceable”

Cheney also plans to visit Japan and Korea, where he will be discussing withdrawal of some U.S. troops from South Korea.

He said there will be “some redeployments” of U.S. forces based in Asia but not on the scale planned for Europe, where the United States has offered to withdraw fully a third of its land-based troops.