Salvador Salks break down

Press, 1 October 1983, Page 11

Salvador Salks break down

NZPA New York While scattered fighting between Leftist Salvadorean guerrillas and the Army continued, a Salvadorean official said yesterday that peace talks with the rebels had broken down because the rebels had rejected elections. International road traffic was paralysed in much of Central America as a result of heavy attacks by Nicaraguan rebels trying to overthrow their country’s Leftist Government. In Managua, the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry made public a Note protesting against an exile rebel group’s use of Costa Rican territory in a hit-and-run attack on Thursday on the border crossing town of Penas Blancas. Trucks and cars were backed up for miles yesterday along the Pan-Ameri-can Highway at El Espino, Nicaragua’s border crossing point with Honduras, and Penas Blancas, the gateway in the south to Costa Rica. The Nicaraguan Democratic Force rebels, backed by the Central Intelligence Agency, attacked and held El Espino earlier this week. Two days later Democratic Revolutionary Alliance rebels, who receive no C.I.A. help, attacked Penas Blancas and withdrew. In Bogota, Colombia, a Salvadorean representative said that talks yesterday between Leftist Salvadorean rebels and the United States-backed Salvadorean Government had failed. Francisco Quinones, president of the Government’s peace commission, emerged from the meeting between four representa-

tives of the Left saying that the rebels “categorically and definitively have rejected our proposal to democratise the country.” The Leftist negotiators had flatly rejected the idea of a Presidential election supervised by the present Government, Mr Quinones said. Dagoberto Gutierrez, one of the rebels’ envoys, said, “The . Salvadorean and United States Governments are looking for a military solution, and the negotiations are only barely hiding that goal. We on the other hand want a negotiated political solution.” He said that the talks would continue.

Insurgents of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, a guerrilla organisation, and the Democratic Revolutionary Front, the political wing of the rebels, have said that they cannot win an election controlled by the Government and have insisted on a provisional Government that includes them.

In Washington, Dr Henry Kissinger, chairman of President Ronald Reagan’s bipartisan commission on Central America, announced that his 12-man panel would visit Panama, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua this month to talk to top officials, including Nicaragua’s Leftist leadership. Dr Kissinger said that the commission, which intends to gather information, had no plans to meet anti-com-munist Nicaraguan or Salvadorean Leftist rebel leaders on their trip. But there would be meetings with the democratic opposition in the area, he said.