Cristiani faces challenges from Left and Right

Press, 2 June 1989, Page 6

Cristiani faces challenges from Left and Right

NZPA-ReuterSan Salvador

The Right-wing businessman, Alfredo Cristiani, who will take office as El Salvador’s President today, will be challenged by Leftist guerrillas and by hardliners in his own party. A guerrilla-imposed transport ban kept traffic off most roads yesterday. The Army claimed a success against the rebels, however, by finding a huge weapons cache it said was intended to be used to disrupt the inauguration.

The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.) rebels ordered the traffic ban — enforced by a threat to attack vehicles — in protest against Mr Cristiani’s incoming Nationalist Republican Alliance (A.R.E.N.A.) Government. Roads in the countryside were almost deserted and city streets quiet with just a few public buses running. Most petrol

stations stayed shut. In Mexico City, an F.M.L.N. spokesman said that under the new Government the civil war would deepen to such an extent that Mr Cristiani would face a choice between negotiations and insurrection.

“In my opinion it will be the beginning of the end of the war,” said the spokesman, Salvador Samayoa, who pledged "uninterrupted offensives” by the rebels. In spite of the traffic stoppage, the F.M.L.N. has fallen short of its stated aim of making El Salvador ungovernable by the time President Jose Napoleon Duarte hands over the office to Cristiani.

The military reported killing 10 guerrillas and wounding nine in clashes in a 24 hour period.

The Armed Forces chief, Colonel Rene Emilio Ponce, said the weapons cache seized by the Army — including more than 500 rifles, most

of them AK-47’s, machineguns, Hungarian pistols, RPG rocket-launchers, and grenades and other explosives — came from Communist countries through Nicaragua. The Nicaraguan President, Daniel Ortega, has declined an invitation to attend Mr Cristiani’s inauguration. The other Central American Presidents, Oscar Arias Sanchez, of Costa Rica, Vinicio Cerezo, of Guatemala, and Jose Azcona, of Honduras, were to be present.

They are due to meet Mr Duarte, ailing from cancer as he ends almost a decade at the forefront of El Salvador’s bloody and contorted politics, for a farewell ceremony.

Mr Arias hailed Mr Duarte as a man who had struggled for peace and democracy. He said he was confident Mr Cristiani would also work to resolve a conflict which has cost 70,000 lives since 1979 and which shows no sign of ending soon.