Shultz Warns Salvador Army on Human Rights : Says Violence Against Civilians Must End if Military Hopes to Beat Insurgents

Secretary of State George P. Shultz, responding to an increase in military violence against civilians in El Salvador, warned the country’s military Thursday that it must bring the human rights problem under control if it hopes to win the war against leftist guerrillas.

“We must see a strong effort, as we have seen, to combat the terrorist guerrillas,” Shultz said in a statement during a four-hour visit to El Salvador. But, he added, “there must always be vigilance on the question of human rights.”

Aides said that Shultz made an even more pointed comment about human rights in a meeting with the country’s top military commanders, reflecting fears among Reagan Administration officials that the armed forces leadership has failed to crack down on increased military violence against civilians.

“The main worry is that the human rights situation is gradually going out of control,” an official traveling with Shultz explained. “It’s not that the military doesn’t care about the problem; it’s more that they haven’t really focused on it.”

A senior State Department official who attended Shultz’s meeting with the officers said that Defense Minister Carlos Vides Casanova, who acted as a spokesman for the military, “expressed a very strong commitment to reforms and human rights.”

“That’s part of the equation, and we understand that,” he quoted Vides Casanova as saying. “When things happen, we investigate.”

However, other Salvadoran officers have said privately that a recent amnesty, in which the government released hundreds of suspected guerrillas, has prompted some military units to kill guerrilla sympathizers rather than turn them in and see them freed.

Human rights organizations have reported a gradual increase in killings by government forces and the leftist guerrillas this year, the eighth year of the Salvadoran war. The legal aid office of the Roman Catholic archdiocese of San Salvador has compiled reports of 32 civilians killed by the armed forces and 21 “death squad” murders in the first three months of this year.

Guerrilla Killings Cited

Those numbers are roughly three times last year’s levels--although they are far below the casualty figures of 1980 and 1981, when dozens of civilians were killed each week by military-directed death squads.

The legal aid office also reported 23 civilians killed by the guerrillas and 29 deaths from mines apparently planted by leftist forces during the same period--roughly double last year’s level.

State Department officials said they are especially worried about the increase in military violence because some Salvadoran officers have been calling openly for a more aggressive war against the guerrillas and their supporters--with less attention to human rights restrictions.

With President Jose Napoleon Duarte terminally ill with liver cancer, a presidential election approaching next March and a major turnover expected in the top ranks of the armed forces, there is a potential for instability in the country’s military leadership, the officials said.

Shultz noted the plan for “a process of orderly succession” in the Salvadoran armed forces and praised it as “very impressive.”

El Salvador is also important to Reagan Administration officials because they have pointed to the country as a major success for their policy in Central America--even as their efforts to change the government in leftist Nicaragua have failed.

Shultz, who is on a three-day tour of Central America, has repeatedly declared El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala to be democratic success stories, in contrast to what he called the “totalitarianism” of Nicaragua.

Noting that the three U.S. allies have all turned from military dictatorship to democracy in the last eight years, Shultz said, “I think what we will pass on (to the next president) in the Reagan Administration is basically a strong pattern of success and an example in facts of what can succeed and what fails.”

Shultz met Thursday morning with El Salvador’s acting President Rodolfo Castillo Claramount and flew to Honduras in the afternoon to meet with President Jose Azcona Hoyo. He assured both that U.S. military aid to their countries would continue even if the Sandinista army defeated the U.S.-backed Contras on the battlefield.

‘Consensus for Pressure’

Both Castillo and Azcona privately pledged continued support for American efforts to put pressure on the Sandinistas through the Contras, U.S. officials said.

“There’s a very clear consensus to keep pressure in all forms, and that includes the (Contra) resistance,” a senior State Department official said.

Shultz was scheduled to meet with Contra leaders in Guatemala on Thursday evening.

In El Salvador, Shultz signed an agreement for $125 million in economic aid, part of a total economic aid package to the country of $390 million this year.

In Honduras, he signed an agreement for a $57-million health aid project to help the government expand programs for rural water delivery and infant health care. He also signed a memorandum to launch a project under which Honduras will operate a radar station on the Caribbean coast as part of a network to detect illegal drug flights into the United States.