The Makati financial centre was transformed last Sunday into a potential battle zone riddled with live explosives and bristling with snipers after about 300 rebel soldiers occupied a shopping and apartment complex there in a 22-hour stand-off with pro-government troops.

Asked whether businesses feared for their security, Guillermo Luz, executive director of the Makati Business Club, told AFP: "I don't think the solution will be to provide more security in Makati. That will not be the solution at all.

"The solution lies in preventing (destabilising incidents) from happening," he said.

Luz said military and police personnel toting guns along the streets of Makati would be "disconcerting to businessmen, shoppers and tourists.

"It is tantamount to the US deploying armed military personnel along Manhattan on a daily basis or the British armed forces doing the same in the City of London," he said.

The Makati Business Club comprises more than 800 chief executive officers and senior executives representing almost 450 of the largest corporations in the Philippines.

The heavily-armed rebel soldiers swooped down on the Ayala Center in the Makati district just a few blocks from the Stock Exchange in the early hours of Sunday.

They set up booby traps outside department stores, hotels and condominiums in the center, which contains a major five-star hotel, two large department stores and the Oakwood towers, a luxury condominium that is home to many foreigners.

The renegade soldiers agreed to return to barracks only after the authorities said they would look into their claims of corruption in the government and military.

Luz said many of the business establishments in Makati had beefed up security following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States.

He said he was unaware whether the Makati business district was part of key installations provided additional security when the government got wind of the mutiny.

"When something like this happens, generally it is difficult to expect the local security force of the Ayala centre to be capable of handling the situation.

"Even if there are a lot of police in Makati, they will be out-manned and out-equipped," he said.

Almost three-fourths of senior business executives polled in a Makati Business Club survey this month said their "immediate problem" was security.

Graft and corruption remains the second most serious problem of the country, according to the survey, conducted before the failed mutiny.

WAR.WIRE