Honasan, a former army colonel who won a presidential pardon after his leading role in several bloody coup attempts in the 1980s, delivered a speech to the Senate in which he admitted to having met the top identified leader of Sunday's rising.

Honasan said his extra-constitutional activities were "a thing of the past."

"I have a diploma... to show that I have already been rehabilitated," he added.

Honasan's junior officer friend, Navy Lieutenant Senior Grade Antonio Trillanes, and nearly 300 other junior officers and their men seized a section of the Makati financial district on Sunday and called for the resignation of President Gloria Arroyo, accusing her of corruption.

The mutiny collapsed without violence less than 24 hours later after the rebels failed to muster popular support or other military units to join their cause. They have since been detained to await possible court-martial.

Police have also arrested a former member of the cabinet of ex-president Joseph Estrada, who was indicted Tuesday for rebellion.

Interior Secretary Jose Lina had identified Honasan as a key supporter of the rebellion and threatened to file charges against him.

Honasan said he could not have instigated the rebellion since he played a key role in convincing the rebels to surrender peacefully.

But he said the issues raised by him and his men when they rose up in arms against then president Corazon Aquino in the late 1980s still "resonate" in the latest mutiny.

"Only the personnel have changed," he added.

He said he and Trillanes, the telegenic and articulate rebel leader, who Honasan described as "the new heartthrob", had met some time ago as the officer solicited funds for certain civic action projects.

After Trillanes showed him a copy of his university master's thesis about alleged corruption in the military, Honasan said he gave the navy officer "direct contact to my office" so he could help his staff draft his political program as part of a presidential bid in next year's election.

"What I am basically is a soldier. That's why I can understand these young people," he said. But "these are not my soldiers. They are your soldiers."

He said that during the negotiations with the rebel leaders on Sunday, they had aired grievances including insufficient logistical support to frontline troops fighting against Muslim separatist and communist insurgencies.

He backed the creation of an independent body to look into the causes of the mutiny, but said its members must not be appointed by Arroyo but instead by the senate so it would be more "credible".

Arroyo on Tuesday named a three-man panel led by a retired Supreme Court justice to conduct the probe.

WAR.WIRE