Salvador Rebels Offer Colonel in Prisoner Swap

Anti-government forces Thursday offered to free a kidnaped army colonel in exchange for the release of jailed union activists and human rights workers “to create a favorable environment” for proposed peace talks between the rebels and President Jose Napoleon Duarte’s government.

Duarte offered June 1 to renew peace talks, but so far the two sides have been unable to agree on conditions for a meeting. The U.S.-backed government and representatives of the guerrillas’ umbrella organization, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, last met in 1984, when they held two rounds of talks.

Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas of San Salvador, who mediated the 1984 talks, has been talking with both sides in an effort to arrange a third round. A government spokesman, Roberto Viera, said that a date for the talks would be set “in a short time.”

Conditional Acceptance

Meanwhile, Viera said the government would accept an earlier rebel proposal for a public debate if that debate were held in Managua, Nicaragua, at the offices of the opposition newspaper La Prensa. Nicaragua’s Sandinista government closed the newspaper June 26 after the U.S. House of Representatives voted approval of $100 million in military and other aid to Nicaraguan rebels, known as contras.

Viera said that such a debate should be moderated by Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Nicaragua and the most prominent critic of the Marxist-led Sandinista government.

“The proposal by the (Salvadoran rebels) was only to have a political show and to mobilize unions and crowds that are sympathetic to them,” Viera said.

He said the two sides should discuss such things as ways to bring about peace in El Salvador and the rest of Central America, a democratic model for El Salvador, elections and the incorporation of the rebels into the legal political process. He said that such a debate should be covered by the international press and that Salvadorans should watch it on television to avoid demonstrations.

Guerrillas’ Aims

The guerrillas proposed a debate last week, saying they wanted to discuss human rights abuses, disappearances and aerial bombings by the government in the war that has gone on in the Salvadoran countryside for more than six years. The guerrillas say they will not put down their arms to form political parties or join the existing political system.

When Duarte announced his offer to renew peace talks, he said it was to discuss the rebels’ putting down their arms. He agreed to a rebel demand that talks be held inside the country.

The issue apparently delaying the fixing of a date for talks was a government desire for initial private talks to set an agenda for the publicized talks inside El Salvador. The guerrillas have refused to hold prior private talks, and Viera said Thursday that the government would go ahead with the third round of dialogue, whether or not private talks were held ahead of time.

On the clandestine guerrilla radio station, the rebels said they would be willing to trade Col. Omar Napoleon Avalos, head of El Salvador’s civil aviation authority, for “union leaders, workers, members of humanitarian organizations, . . all those noncombatants currently in prison.”

Seized Last October

Avalos, formerly head of the presidential guard, was abducted from his farm east of the capital last October.

This was the guerrillas’ first offer to release Avalos.

The rebels did not specify how many prisoners they are seeking in exchange. At least five leaders from the transportation industry union are known to have been jailed since April, and other union activists are believed to be in prison.