Salvador Peace Talks: Only History : A Year After La Palma, There Is Little Accord on Anything

White flags and euphoria filled the air in the provincial town of La Palma last Oct. 15 when President Jose Napoleon Duarte and anti-government rebels walked into a church for an unprecedented round of peace talks.

The meeting was hailed as one of the most daring moves of Duarte’s young presidency, and Duarte was lauded as a peacemaker, arriving at the talks armed only with the Salvadoran constitution.

Today, just a year after that meeting in the church spread hope throughout the country, the dialogue seems to be only history.

When representatives of the two sides met again, six weeks after the La Palma discussions, their differences outweighed the drama, or any apparent chance of agreement.

And since then, the government and the rebels of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front have been unable to agree on the terms for another meeting, let alone on conditions for peacefully ending the 5 1/2-year-old civil war.

Also, Duarte’s daughter, Ines Guadalupe Duarte Duran, has been held since Sept. 10 by kidnapers who say they are members of the front, known as the FMLN after its initials in Spanish. There have been negotiations but no visible progress, and the distrust between the two sides is as great as ever. Efforts to renew the talks are at an impasse.

On Monday, Duarte put three of his daughters and four grandchildren on a U.S. Air Force plane bound for the United States, saying that the family has received telephone calls threatening another kidnaping.

The president said his wife and two sons will remain with him in El Salvador, where the government is negotiating with the rebels for the release of his oldest daughter.

The kidnaping appears to have complicated chances for peace talks. The Roman Catholic Church, which has appealed repeatedly for dialogue, is discouraged. Msgr. Gregorio Rosa Chavez, the auxiliary bishop of San Salvador, revisited La Palma not long ago and discussed the peace processs in a homily, saying:

“I saw that there were still a few white flags waving between the branches of trees--very few, of course, as if saying there is still hope, but that it is very remote.”

Each Side Blames Other

The government and the Farabundo Marti Front rebels both insist that they are willing to continue the peace talks, and each blames the other for the 11-month break.

“I think that they (the guerrillas) have not arrived at an internal agreement on dialogue,” Julio Rey Prendes, the minister of communications and a close associate of the president, said before Duarte’s daughter was kidnaped.

“They just talk about talks, but they don’t talk,” said Guillermo Ungo, a leader of the Revolutionary Democratic Front, the guerrillas’ political arm.

Even talk about talks had become infrequent until the Catholic bishops issued a pastoral letter in August imploring the two sides to resume the dialogue and warning that if they failed, “El Salvador would be left with no alternative but total destruction. . . .”

The Roman Catholic Church, which has mediated the talks, gave its blessing to Duarte’s government in the letter, causing the rebels to respond angrily that they are losing confidence in the church as an intermediary.

While the church has continued to press for a third meeting, some observers charge that the government and the guerrillas have both been stalling, in the belief that time will work to their advantage.

“Maybe it is politically convenient to talk, but not necessarily to advance in negotiations,” a foreign political observer said, asking not to be identified by name. “The government wants to erode the FMLN’s political support in order to extract more, and the FMLN wants to show that despite the army’s giant operations, they can’t be defeated.”

The two sides had been arguing over the technicalities of a third meeting for months before Duarte Duran was abducted. But at the root of the dispute are the same issues that have separated them from the outset.

Duarte views peace talks as a dialogue between his democratically elected government and a group of leftist outlaws. He wants the guerrillas to lay down their arms, form political parties and other legal organizations and take part in elections. To those who disagree, he offers safe passage out of the country.

The guerrillas believe the Duarte government has managed to stay in power only because of the United States’ support. They believe that he must recognize the rebel army as a force equal to the Salvadoran army and negotiate on that basis.

The rebels have proposed a new constitution, sharing of power, a merging of the two armies and withdrawal of U.S. military advisers.