By Xinhua
Manila : A group of Filipino renegade officers and soldiers, who staged a stand off with the government in the country’s financial hub Makati City, surrendered to police after a brief confrontation.
Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, a former navy officer who led a shortlived mutiny in 2003 in the same city, and an army officer who was involved in a coup plot last year, walked out of the luxury Peninsula Hotel to face soldiers and armoured vehicles that were preparing to storm the hotel.
The rebels said they decided to come out of the hotel, as they did not want to endanger the lives of other civilians after government troops looked poised to take control of the hotel by force.
Police troopers fired tear gas into the hotel lobby while an armoured vehicle entered the main entrance shortly before the renegades declared they would give up.
Trillanes earlier said he was ready to die and rejected a government ultimatum to surrender.
“Well they can try, they can do anything. I’m going to expect the worst from these people,” he said.
He said the renegades themselves would not start violence as it was his “moral obligation as an elected senator”.
Trillanes and his followers marched into the luxury hotel after walking out of a Makati courtroom during a trial for his presumed role in the 2003 mutiny.
Following the incident, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who was in San Pablo City for the Local Peace and Security Assembly, returned straight to Malacanang presidential palace to preside over a crisis meeting over the situation, according to official Philippines News Agency.
Defence Secretary Gilbert Teodoro also branded the action mounted by the small group of military personnel as illegal and ordered the military to re-arrest them.
The Philippine military has also appealed to the public to remain calm and said the military was solidly behind President Arroyo.