‘No Salvador intervention’

Press, 28 March 1981, Page 8

‘No Salvador intervention’

NZPA-Reuter San Salvador

Any possibility of a United States military’ intervention in El Salvador appeared reduced yesterday as the Salvadorean junta leader. Napoleon Duarte, said that he would reject such an intervention and the American Secretary of State. (Mr Alexander Haig) told Senators: "We cannot dictate to a sovereign nation." "We would accept an intervention to help solve the social convulsions affecting our country, but we are not going to allow an action that accelerates these, conflicts and creates imperialist domination,” Mr Duarte said in an interview with the. Chilean magazine “Cosas.” He admitted that military repression had worsened • a situation already made bad bv violence from extremists of the Left and Right, but said the level of violence was not what, it once was. “If the killing had continued at the rate of a year ago, by now we would have 200,000 dead,”

he said. Mr Haig told a Senate sub-committee that he had rejected the idea of sending an envoy to Latin America and Canada to dis, cuss a possible political solution in El Salvador, saying that would be an improper attempt to "dictate to a sovereign nation.” He said the military aid already granted El Salvadorhad been specifically requested by Mr Duarte.

'Mr Haig. who has moderated his earlier tone on the matter in the face of a groundswell of American public opposition to American involvement in El Salvador, called the military aid “modest" and noted that it accompanied an economic aid programme three, times bigger. He still considered Cuba to be the prime instigator of El Salvador's Leftist uprising, and he maintained that Havana had significantly stepped up its activity in Latin America, particularly in Colombia.