Love-Hate Relationship a Hurdle at Bases Talks : Philippines: Arguments over history, pride and money strain military alliance with the U.S. Outside negotiations, protesters battle police.

Even for Manila, it was an incongruous scene Monday afternoon.

Down the street from the U.S. Embassy, about 2,000 angry demonstrators shouted “Yankee go home!” and faced hundreds of helmeted police armed with truncheons, tear gas and water cannons.

Nearby, scores of visa applicants watched and waited patiently under a shady tree outside the U.S. consular office for their chance to join the 40,000 Filipinos a year who visit the United States.

It was another example of the sometimes surreal love-hate relationship between the United States and its former Asian colony. But the increasingly troubled alliance will be vital as the two nations square off to decide the fate of six American military facilities, and ultimately the future of economic and political relations between Washington and Manila.

Negotiators will meet today behind closed doors in a wood-paneled conference room at the Central Bank for the first round of substantive talks on the bases. But remarks made Monday in opening ceremonies suggested that arguments over history, pride and money may outweigh those of strategic military needs in the 1990s.

Philippine chief negotiator and Foreign Secretary Raul Manglapus, for example, ridiculed “elected American officials” who utter “the caustic taunt: How much must America pay the Filipinos to protect the Philippines?”

Instead, he argued, the United States has used the Philippines for its own military purposes ever since seizing the colony from Spain in 1898. Poor U.S. planning, he said, meant that “defeat and devastation were inevitable” when Japan invaded the Philippines in 1941.

“Tens of thousands of us were called to the American colors, not to save the Philippines . . . but to keep the war from reaching Australia and eventually the American mainland,” he said. “Even before the Filipino soldier had finished fighting and dying for America, he was judged by the American Congress to be worth only one-half the pay of the American soldier.”

Most galling, Manglapus said, the U.S. Congress has reneged on a 1988 executive agreement to pay $481 million a year in military and economic aid to use the facilities. The current shortfall, he claimed, is $222.58 million.

“Dollars are important, but it is the solemn word that is here at issue,” he said. “The bilateral relations of any two nations can look forward to no significant future if one cannot count on the other’s word.”

U.S. officials insist that the 1989 shortfall is $96 million, and that military credits or other arrangements may yet make up the difference. In any case, they argue, the bases provide jobs to 68,000 Filipinos, second only to the Philippine government, and pump $1 billion into the nation’s economy.

When it was his turn, U.S. special negotiator Richard L. Armitage mixed kind words with veiled threats. “It troubles me,” he said, “when I hear some Filipinos assert that American use of Philippine military bases can only be a vestige of the colonial relationship, that the Philippines can never be truly free, truly independent and truly democratic until the Americans are gone, once and for all.

“It troubles me because it understates, for reasons I cannot fathom, the contribution the Philippines has made and still makes to peace and stability in Asia,” Armitage added. “It troubles me because it suggests a belief that our mutual sacrifices have been essentially meaningless.”

Still, he said, the United States is prepared to leave if asked. If no mutual interests are found, he said, “then we have precious little to discuss other than the terms of an amicable separation.”

“Indeed, if separation is your desire, let us move to that end with speed, confidence and goodwill,” he added. “If our mutual interests cannot sustain us as partners, let us part as friends.”

Current leases for the bases, which include giant Clark Air Base and Subic Bay Naval Base, expire in September, 1991. The “exploratory” talks will determine whether to start formal negotiations to extend or modify the leases.

The start of the talks was overshadowed by the shooting deaths of two Air Force enlisted men Sunday night by suspected Communist guerrillas outside Clark. The dead airmen were identified as John H. Raven, 19, of Delta Junction, Alaska, and James C. Green, 20, of Craig, Colo.

Secretary of Defense Fidel V. Ramos said he had ordered an “extensive manhunt” for the killers.

The Communist New People’s Army, in a statement, stopped short of claiming responsibility for the killings, the British news agency Reuters said, but warned “national traitors” such as President Corazon Aquino that they will be tried and punished for having “sold your nation to U.S. imperialism.”

Reuters also reported that at least 25 police officers and 30 anti-base protesters were hurt in several violent clashes. At least 80 people were arrested near the site of the talks.

In Washington, United Press International reported, a coalition of church groups and a retired naval officer urged the United States to give up the bases and arrange a two- to three-year transition to ease the shock to the nation’s economy.

The Church Coalition for Human Rights in the Philippines and retired Adm. Gene La Rocque, head of the Center for Defense Information, said at a news conference that Clark and Subic Bay do not serve the defense interests of either the United States or the Philippines.