Salvador Exiles Rebuke Rebels, Ask Talks

Salvadoran political exiles Tuesday criticized their guerrilla allies’ decision to suspend cease-fire talks with the government over the killing of a human rights worker and called for the dialogue to resume as soon as possible.

The armed rebels, meanwhile, launched their seventh nationwide traffic stoppage this year, paralyzing public transportation throughout the country. In the capital, few of the buses that normally crowd narrow downtown streets were running, and army trucks shuttled workers to and from their jobs. There were no reports of violence.

Diplomats and political observers said the traffic ban appeared to be a guerrilla tactic to provoke army troops to leave the towns and take to the highways before a cease-fire goes into effect. Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte is expected to declare a unilateral cease-fire to begin Thursday under a regional peace plan signed by the five Central American presidents.

The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front guerrillas announced the traffic ban and halted cease-fire talks after the Oct. 26 assassination of Herbert Ernesto Anaya, coordinator of the non-governmental Human Rights Commission.

Guillermo Ungo, a leader of the Revolutionary Democratic Front of exiled politicians, said in a telephone interview from Panama that it was inappropriate for the rebels to break off talks because “it gives Duarte the argument that we are not serious about dialogue.”

Ungo’s criticism of the Farabundo Marti Front was the first open disagreement between the politicians and guerrillas since 1985, when the rebels killed 13 people, including four U.S. Marines, at an outdoor cafe in the capital.

Ungo insisted that the discord did not represent a split between the leftist groups, despite the fact that the exiled political leaders are planning to return to El Salvador to begin open political organizing.

‘Differences, Not Divisions’

“This represents differences, not divisions,” Ungo said. “I argue with my wife, but it doesn’t mean we’re getting a divorce.”

He said the two groups will meet this week under the mediation of Msgr. Arturo Rivera y Damas, Archbishop of San Salvador, to try to agree on a new schedule for talks.

Ungo said he plans to join political exile Ruben Zamora in returning to the country later this month to test the political openings of Duarte’s U.S.-backed government. Ungo and Zamora, both Social Democrats, are the best-known leaders of the Revolutionary Democratic Front, known by its Spanish initials FDR.

Ungo, head of the small National Revolutionary Movement party, was Duarte’s running mate in 1972 elections that ended in fraud and several years of exile for both of them.

Zamora, head of the small Popular Social Christian Movement, was a member of Duarte’s Christian Democratic Party until 1980, when he resigned to protest the party’s participation in the government while thousands of people, including Zamora’s brother, were killed by military death squads.

Zamora announced his imminent return last month, and several political observers said they believe that the killing of Anaya was a warning to him not to return. Duarte suggested that he may have been killed by leftists seeking a martyr, but human rights activists say they suspect a rightist death squad.

Zamora has said repeatedly that he will not break his ties with the guerrillas, despite insistence by Duarte and the military that he may not enter the country unless he makes that declaration.

Some diplomats suggest that the Revolutionary Democratic Front’s criticism of the guerrillas may be a tactical move by the politicians to demonstrate some distance from the guerrillas without having to openly break with them. But even if Zamora and Ungo do not formally split from the rebels, their conflict with them is likely to grow the more the two men become involved in the legal political system.