Latin Peace Plan Working, Monitoring Panel Says

The 15-member commission in charge of verifying the Central American peace agreement said Sunday that the accord is working.

“We are noticing advances, though not as quick as we would wish,” Costa Rican Foreign Minister Rodrigo Madrigal said after a seven-hour meeting of the verification commission.

The commission is made up of the foreign ministers of 13 Latin American nations, including the five Central American signatories of the peace accord and the secretaries general of the United Nations and the Organization of American States.

In its first meeting to evaluate compliance with the peace pact since it went into effect Nov. 5, the commission emphasized that all five Central American countries have taken steps toward achieving peace.

In a 14-point report issued Sunday, the panel said reconciliation commissions have been established in each country and that talks have begun with the political opposition in El Salvador and Nicaragua.

The panel also applauded El Salvador and Guatemala for declaring amnesty and Nicaragua for pardoning political prisoners and declaring a unilateral cease-fire.

But in what several Latin American diplomats saw as an apparent important concession to the Sandinista government, the commission accepted a condition of Nicaragua’s amnesty. This specifies that the amnesty is subject to compliance of other parts of the agreement that deal with the non-use of a territory to attack another country and cessation of aid to irregular forces.

In other words, a senior Latin American diplomat said, “Nicaragua does not have to implement amnesty until Honduras kicks out the Contras and the Americans stop helping them.”