Salvadoran Peace Talks Are Frozen, Rebel Leader Says

A Salvadoran rebel leader said Thursday that peace talks with the government of El Salvador are frozen indefinitely, but he stopped short of saying the negotiations are dead.

Guillermo Ungo, president of the Revolutionary Democratic Front, the political alliance of the left-wing insurgents, also made public the contents of a letter to Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte, dated Jan. 30, rejecting Duarte’s demand that the rebels renounce violence if they want the talks to proceed.

“A general state of war exists in El Salvador,” the letter said in part, “and there is no way anyone can seriously pretend to overcome this by mere declarations.”

Ungo, a former professor of law who headed a small socialist party in El Salvador, fled to exile in Panama in 1980. He travels often to other countries as a spokesman for the Salvadoran rebel movement.

Rebel leaders complained two weeks ago that Duarte’s government had refused to respond to a suggested offer of a time and place for a new round of talks. Ungo’s assessment that the talks are at a standstill underlines the difficulty of reaching any settlement soon.

“It is not probable we will hold another round of talks before the municipal elections scheduled for the middle of March,” Ungo told reporters, but he refused to speculate on whether the government might be willing to talk after the elections.

For the time being, he said, the talks “are frozen indefinitely” because the Duarte government, under pressure from the Salvadoran armed forces and the Reagan Administration, still hopes for a military solution.

“We believe that President Duarte has little capacity to impose his will to have a dialogue with us--if, in fact, that is his will--because the real power is held by the military and by the Reagan Administration,” Ungo said.

“We know that the military has told Duarte that it is all right to talk with us as long as there is no real negotiation and they can pursue their military aims on the battlefield. We don’t see the point of talking just for the sake of talking.”

Eventually, he said, the peace talks will be renewed because they provide the only forum for negotiating an end to the civil war, which has claimed 50,000 lives.