The State - News from March 20, 1985

U.S. military aid to El Salvador causes “destruction and death,” Berkeley Mayor Eugene (Gus) Newport said after spending a week behind leftist rebel lines. “The military aid, which President Reagan says the American people are sending for the good of the people, in reality is used for the destruction and death against the civil population,” Newport said in San Salvador. The Reagan Administration, which ardently supports President Jose Napoleon Duarte’s fight against about 10,000 Marxist-led guerrillas, has proposed a record $483 million in military and economic aid for the country in fiscal 1986. Newport said that he intended to go to Chalatenango Province to visit San Antonio Los Ranchos, Berkeley’s sister city, to set up a program to help fund agriculture, fishery development and other community projects but that he gave up trying to reach the town after an attack by government soldiers and aircraft.