Army Mutiny Contained, Philippine Officials Say : Mindanao: The rebellion on the southern island fails to attract support, Manila reports.

The Philippine government of President Corazon Aquino said today that its troops have contained an army rebellion that captured two cities in the southern part of the island nation without firing a shot.

“We were monitoring it overnight. It’s really in isolation,” said government spokesman Tomas Gomez.

Gomez said the government is ready to negotiate an end to the rebellion, although it would refuse to discuss political demands of the rebel leader, renegade Col. Alexander Noble, who wants to set up a separate state in Mindanao.

“What is negotiable would be the personal safety of the people there,” Gomez said in a telephone interview.

“I think it would require patience, firmness and the readiness to use force,” Gomez said. Aquino, who has survived six coup attempts since being swept to power in a 1986 popular revolt, vowed to crush the latest rebellion.

Striking before dawn Thursday, several hundred renegade soldiers and tribal militiamen took over one of the biggest military camps on the southern island of Mindanao and demanded negotiations with the government to set up a separate republic.

The rebels also took over another town, but government armed forces chief Gen. Renato de Villa said the mutineers had failed to attract support from other parts of the southern Philippine island.

De Villa said it will be “a few days” before government troops can launch an assault on the two rebel-held towns.

The insurgents tried to seize a third town in Mindanao, Iligan, but the army said they retreated after air force jets fired rockets on rebels trying to take over a military camp.

Mindanao is the second largest island in the Philippines, rich in mineral resources and a center of the country’s pineapple and coconut industries. The island, with a population of 17 million, was the center of a Muslim separatist revolt in the 1970s in which at least 50,000 people died.

The military had warned for months that the next coup attempt would be preceded by an uprising in Mindanao.

The rebels mined a bridge leading to Butuan, about 500 miles southeast of Manila, and blocked the road to it with logging trucks.

Noble entered Cagayan de Oro, about 50 miles to the southwest, on an armored personnel carrier to the cheers of several thousand of the city’s half million inhabitants.

His forces entered Camp Evangelista, the headquarters of the 4th Infantry Division, and nearby residents evacuated their homes as night fell, fearing a government assault on the rebels.

The rebels later issued a statement to news agencies declaring Mindanao a “free and sovereign republic.”

Aquino placed the 150,000-strong military on full combat alert amid fears that the insurrection might spark other uprisings.