Reagan Praises El Salvador on Human Rights

President Reagan, after a meeting with Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte, today praised the “heartwarming progress” that Duarte’s country has made in consolidating democratic rule and in improving protection of human rights.

With Duarte standing at his side, Reagan said the progress El Salvador has made would not have been possible without U.S. assistance, and he suggested that U.S. goals in Nicaragua will not be achieved if the Congress continues to deny aid to the contras.

“If there is to be peace and democracy in the region, if our neighbors can be spared the tragedy that comes from every communist dictatorship, we must have the courage to help all our friends in Central America,” Reagan said.

Duarte said that in contrast to El Salvador’s 1979 revolution, the Nicaraguan revolution in that same year “has been betrayed.”

“We have fulfilled our commitment and kept our promises while the Marxist Sandinista regime has not,” he said.

The Administration is hoping that Duarte’s nine-day U.S. visit will call attention to what it regards as the principal U.S. policy victory in Central America.

Before today’s meeting, U.S. officials said the situation in El Salvador has changed dramatically since 1981 when the country was confronted with a raging civil war, 500 politically motivated killings a month, a declining economy and an ineffectual, unelected government.

According to those officials, who asked not to be identified, the Salvadoran army has been successful in combating leftist guerrillas in recent months. The level of political assassinations, they said, has dropped to about 30 a month, most of them committed by leftists.