Junta appeals tor calm in tense Salvador

Press, 27 March 1980, Page 8

Junta appeals tor calm in tense Salvador

NZPA-Reuter Sari Salvador El Salvador’s revolutionary military junta has appealed to the restive population not to allow the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero to trigger a civil war.

Archbishop Romero, 63-year-old civil-rights cham= pion, was shot dead by a marksman’s bullet on Monday while saying Mass at a hospital chapel in the capital, San Salvador. Hundreds of people yesterday thronged the Sacred Heart Basilica, where the Archbishop’s body lay in state.

Left-wing militants and security forces in the interior of the Central American country.

But the guerrilla group LP-28 (Popular' Leagues of February 28) called for an insurrection against El Salvador’s rulers. In a statement issued to reporters in Mexico the group said: “The Salvadorean people and the peoples of the world have come to realise that today, more than ever, there are no peaceful solutions and that the only way to victory is the popular'insurrection.” Churches in several other Latin-American countries reacted with sorrow and revul-

sion to the Archbishop’s death.

Nicaragua’s ruling junta summoned all members of the Sandinista Revolutionary Party to a memorial Mass and declared three days of national mourning. The Colombian Episcopal Conference declared: “Undoubtedly the vile and execrable assassination of Monsignor Romero will awaken in all a feeling of deep revulsion and immense sadness.”

Troop carriers . and soldiers on foot patrolled deserted city streets in the early hours, but no fresh outbreaks of violence were reported yesterday. The ruling junta called for a return to “harmony and peace” and demanded that all sectors of the population should not turn Archbishop Romero’s death into “the starting point for a civil war.”

His death was followed by a spate of bomb explosions in the capital and surrounding areas. Five people were killed in clashes between