Won’t Meet All Enrile Demands, Aquino Asserts

MANILA —  President Corazon Aquino said Friday that she will not bow to demands by her powerful defense minister to fire left-wing Cabinet members and restore temporarily the constitution of deposed Philippine strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos.

Her comments in an interview virtually guarantee renewed sparring between Aquino and Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile just days after they seemed to have reached a political truce.

For several weeks, Enrile had been bombarding the Aquino government with demands for fundamental change.

They ranged from scrapping plans for a January plebiscite on a new constitution to stepping up military action against the 17-year-old Communist insurgency.

Urged Cabinet Firings

Enrile also wanted Aquino to fire more than half a dozen Cabinet ministers who the armed forces believe are too left-wing.

At midweek, after publicly ignoring a campaign that fueled speculation about a military coup, Aquino met Enrile privately and hammered out what seemed on the surface to be a truce.

But in Friday’s interview, Aquino said she actually agreed with only two of the five requests that he made--setting a deadline for a cease-fire agreement with the Communist rebels and weeding out corrupt and incompetent officials appointed to local government positions in the provinces.

On the Cabinet reshuffle, she said, “In the same way that others have asked me to get rid of some people, I have said ‘no’ because all of us have been together in this, and if we had not all cooperated and contributed our efforts, we would not have been able to oust Mr. Marcos.”