Ill With Cancer, Duarte Vows ‘to Fight It Out’

Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte, diagnosed as having gastric cancer, said today he feels well despite his condition and is determined “to fight it out.”

Duarte’s government had said Wednesday that he is “a man on the verge of death.”

Duarte, appearing pale and drawn, spoke with reporters outside the emergency room of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Media representatives had been told by a hospital spokesman to gather there for a statement from the Salvadoran ambassador. Within minutes, Duarte drove up to the hospital in a limousine.

He said he had left the hospital, to which he was admitted Tuesday night for sophisticated tests to determine the extent of his cancer.

‘Some Liver Involvement’

A hospital statement said that Duarte, 62, has a malignant gastric ulcer and that preliminary tests showed “some liver involvement” but that no further spread of the cancer had been detected. Duarte said the definitive results of today’s examination will not be known for a few days.

Whatever those results, he said in English:

“One thing is assured. I’ll fight it out because I believe in God.”

Earlier, in Spanish, he said,

“I leave a message for my country that they should never lose the liberty they have now.”

Duarte’s personal physician, Benjamin Interiano, said he does not know how long the Salvadoran president, one of the United States’ staunchest allies, will remain hospitalized in the United States. But he described Duarte’s condition as “very guarded.”