While one claimant leader thanked President Estrada for making the settlement possible, another continued to ''vigorously reject and oppose it.''

Sectoral Rep. Loreta Ann Rosales went to the Palace to thank the President ''for the $150 million settlement.'' She said ''he had a hard  time convincing the Marcoses to give up $150 million.''

Romeo Capulong, counsel of communist leader Jose Ma. Sison, said he had advised his client ''to vigorously reject and oppose the $150 million-settlement.''

Capulong is also general counsel of the Samahan ng mga Ex-detainees Laban sa Detensyon at para sa Amnestiya (Selda), which broke away from Rosales' group, Claimants 1081.

It is Capulong's group, who are demanding a share of any Marcos wealth recovered in the future until the $2.5 billion judgment is fully satisfied.

Sison excluded

But Capulong's major client, Sison, founding chair of the Communist Party of the Philippines, is not part of the settlement. Sison will not get a centavo from the deal as Imelda Marcos had specified before she agreed to settle with the rights victims that Sison should be out of it, according to the rights victims' local counsel Rod Domingo.

Sison and 21 other US-based plaintiffs were excluded from the deal following Ms Marcos' insistence that CPP leaders should not benefit from the proposed settlement, Domingo said.

Domingo said Capulong was incensed the agreement was forged after his clients were excluded.

''That's why Capulong is making a big fuss out of the agreement and he is resorting to convincing other claimants to reject the agreement,'' Domingo told the Inquirer.

Domingo maintained he and Swift would work for the deletion of the controversial ''midnight insertions,'' in the settlement which would grant the Marcoses immunity from rights-related suits in the future during a formal fairness hearing in Hawaii on April 29.

''Judge Real will only render final approval of the agreement after all of the sentiments to be aired by the victims are heard on April 29,'' Domingo stressed.

Trajano case

Only the 9,539 martial law victims and the case of Archimedes Trajano against Imee Marcos are covered by the proposed settlement, which was ''provisionally'' approved by US District Court Judge Manuel Real.

Trajano was represented by lawyer Rene Saguisag, a former senator.

A judgment of $4.9 million was awarded to Trajano, a student activist who was ordered killed by Imee Marcos.

The Marcoses agreed to include the Trajano case as a ''default judgment'' against Imee.

Sison, along with his late brother Francisco Sison and Jaime Piopongco, and Vicente Clemente and 20 others filed separate class action suits against the Marcoses in 1986 in Hawaii.

They were called ''direct action plaintiffs'' until Real decided to consolidate the cases with that of the 9,539 martial law victims that made possible the Multi-district Litigation (MDL) No. 840.

A joint hearing on the three cases or MDL 840 was held between Sept. 9-22, 1992.

Besides Capulong, Sison was represented by American lawyers Paul Hoffman, Ellen Lutz, Ralph Steinhardt and Peter Labrador.

In his opening statement during the trial, Hoffman said the Sison brothers and Piopongco were Ferdinand Marcos' political opponents and that Marcos had ''every reason to take the actions that he did to punish them for their opposition to his regime, whether it was real or suspected.''

Hoffman said Sison was seeking redress from the Marcos estate because he was tortured and subjected to cruel and degrading treatment from 1977 to 1986.

Sison, he said, went underground in the late 1960s after an armed attack against him until he was captured in November 1977.

Real, at first, excluded Sison's case from being heard for the latter's failure to attend the hearing.

Capulong said Sison, who is now based in the Hague, Netherlands, was denied a US visa and could not attend the trial.

Sison was allowed to testify through a videotaped deposition. He and the others were given separate awards by the US court.

But Sison and the others were excluded from the proposed agreement as Ms Marcos, through her lawyer James Linn, consistently stressed that she would only consent to the release of the $150 million from the escrow account at the Philippine National Bank if Sison was dropped from the list of claimants.

Ms Marcos finally affixed her signature and waived any claim to the money when assured that Sison's case was not among those to be covered by the proposed settlement, Domingo said.

Capulong maintained that Sison was not the only claimant who would reject the settlement.

In rejecting the settlement, Capulong said, Sison would be joined by most of the victims of human rights violations during martial law belonging to Selda.

He insisted that most of the claimants were never consulted and were ''left in the dark'' by class suit lead counsel Robert Swift.

He said the claimants found ''unacceptable'' the midnight insertion of clause 5.2 which provides that the Marcoses were ''never charged with human rights violations anywhere in the world, including in the Philippines'' but if they were, ''they are fully released by this paragraph.''

Selda will hold a general assembly today to discuss how to go about the process of rejecting the settlement.

Imee in Guest House

Yesterday, the President also had another $150-million settlement-related visitor in Ilocos Norte Rep. Imee Marcos.

But she had the President's full attention for an hour as they talked inside the Premier Guest House.

When she stepped out, she refused to talk to Malacañang newsmen, saying, ''I'm here for the ARMM. Please let me go to my car.''

But Marcos had entered the Palace compound shortly after the signing of the law.

Rosales had also gone to Malacañang to witness the signing of the election law on Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

The law postponed the ARMM elections, allowed incumbent ARMM officials to serve their full three-year terms and nullified the present list of voters in the region.

Mr. Estrada said government would study a proposal aired by the Marcos family to include the Marcos estate's P23-billion tax liability in negotiations for a settlement.

''It's just a mere proposal, so let's just study it first,'' President Estrada said.

No Marcos negotiator

In the same interview, Executive Secretary Ronaldo Zamora admitted that he had been having a hard time negotiating with the Marcoses as the family has not even designated a negotiator.

''We have been saying this month after month after month. We would like the Marcos family to come up with just one name,'' he said, adding that the Marcoses have been unable to come up with a single name.

By Christine Herrera and Martin P. Marfil