Interior Secretary Jose Lina asked state prosecutors to file rebellion charges against Senator Gregorio Honasan and six other associates whom he accused of helping mount the day-long uprising by hundreds of rebel soldiers on July 27.

Prosecutors are to decide later whether to file the charges in court.

Honasan, a former army colonel who led several coup attempts in the 1980s, was the first senior political figure to be publicly implicated by authorities in the uprising.

The government says the action was part of a wider conspiracy to depose Arroyo and replace her with a 15-member junta.

The rebels, armed with assault rifles and explosives which they used to booby-trap buildings, said they were merely dramatizing their calls for reform and for the resignation of Arroyo and other officials whom they accused of corruption.

Arroyo said the authorities were wrapping up an investigation into the rebellion.

"The axe will fall heaviest upon those who use the pedestal of legitimate political power to destroy the very democratic system that installed them in office," Arroyo said in a statement that did not identify the suspects.

Honasan, a declared candidate in next year's presidential election, rejected the charges.

"The filing of charges based on fabricated evidence and false testimonies is another demonstration of (Arroyo's) grand plan to remove all roadblocks to advance her naked ambition to extend her term beyond 2004," he said in a statement.

"I will have to be unaccessible until this situation is clarified," he later told reporters in a telephone interview. Honasan has not emerged in public for a week.

The government last week arrested Ramon Cardenas, a member of the cabinet of ex-Filipino leader Joseph Estrada, for his alleged role in the rebellion.

Estrada was swept from power in January 2001 in a military-backed popular revolt that installed Arroyo as president.

The military said Monday nearly three dozen more officers and men had been arrested in connection with the mutiny, raising the total in detention to 348. Two other officers and five enlisted men remain at large.

Armed forces chief of staff General Narciso Abaya said that while most of the known conspirators had been arrested, he could not guarantee those still at large would not attempt another rebellion.

"There are no overt acts right now on their part, but again we are still checking to determine whether silence means something else," he said.

The mutineers had booby-trapped the Makati financial district and called for Arroyo's resignation, but the mutiny collapsed without bloodshed less than 24 hours later when it failed to muster popular support.

Last week 321 soldiers were charged in civilian court with rebellion. Abaya said he would decide shortly whether to convene a separate court-martial to try at least 108 officers also involved.

The rebels wanted to "institute totalitarian rule" through a 15-member junta, Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes said.

"As early as 2001" the cabal began recruiting elite units to carry it out, Abaya said.

Abaya said he deployed a battalion of infantry, comprising about 500 men, in Manila last weekend "just in case there are again some happenings as in the other weekend."

Arroyo said meanwhile she would soon give up the emergency powers she assumed to crush the rebellion. The powers include making arrests without court orders.

"I expect that we can lift the state of rebellion earlier than expected as we mop up the fringes of the conspiracy," she said in a statement.

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