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May Support Leftist Participation, Diplomats Say : Key Salvador Rebel Wavers on Elections

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Times Staff Writer

Joaquin Villalobos, one of the most militant guerrilla leaders in the Salvadoran civil war, says he is easing his once total opposition to leftist participation in this country’s electoral process, according to various diplomatic sources.

Villalobos, who recently left his military base in northern El Salvador for the first time in several years for consultations with the Nicaraguan government, reportedly told that country’s leftist Sandinista leaders that he is going to be more flexible, the diplomats say.

According to the sources, who asked that they not be named or quoted directly, the guerrilla chief--who heads the People’s Revolutionary Army, the largest fighting force of the rebels’ Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front--said he has not yet decided to support leftist participation in presidential elections next March but has not decided to oppose them, either.

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At least, one Latin American ambassador put it, Villalobos is willing not to sabotage them.

Anything short of an all-out effort to wreck the elections would be a reversal of the strategy of Villalobos and other guerrilla leaders, who have repeatedly said they would settle for little less than a military conquest.

If Villalobos has indeed changed tactics--and several Salvadoran politicians and other experts think he is lying--it would appear to be part of a plan to regain the support of a populace increasingly tired of the eight-year war and its killings and economic and social disruption.

Project Moderate Image

It may also reflect a belief that he wants the guerrilla movement to appear more moderate so as not to embarrass American liberals, who he reportedly believes will be more receptive to the rebels’ demands if the Democrats win the U.S. presidential election in the fall.

Villalobos says he is not the Pol Pot of his country, another diplomat said--a reference to the Cambodian leader whose regime is blamed for the deaths of more than 1 million people in the 1970s.

In recent months, there has been some movement by Salvadoran political leftists away from the previous hard line of boycotting the government of President Jose Napoleon Duarte.

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Ruben Zamora, a leader of the guerrillas’ political wing, returned from nearly eight years of exile late last year to direct a leftist coalition known as the Convergence, and he is actively trying to meet legal qualifications for running in next year’s presidential election.

Another exile, Guillermo Ungo, also has been making trips to El Salvador to explore the possibility of running for president.

Both Zamora and Ungo were colleagues of Duarte in his Christian Democratic Party but split with the president over his cooperation with the military and his refusal to implement major social reforms. Both fled the country when they were made targets of right-wing death squads.

When Zamora returned, Villalobos and other insurrection leaders opposed his efforts and ordered their followers not to cooperate with his political initiative.

Villalobos’ reported change of tactics, if not his true philosophy, is nevertheless said by diplomats and Salvadoran political experts to have confused Farabundo Marti followers. Some are continuing to oppose the Zamora-Ungo effort, while others are signing up to vote.

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