Duarte Calls Rebel Bid ‘Proposal of War’

President Jose Napoleon Duarte on Wednesday totally rejected a Marxist guerrilla offer to end their revolution by taking part in a presidential election and by accepting its results if the balloting is postponed until next September.

Dismissing the plan as a “proposal of war,” Duarte told a news conference that “I am absolutely clear about one thing: On June 1 at 12 noon my term ends, and I have to give up power. I won’t stay a single day more.”

In outlining one government objection to the rebels’ demand for a delay in the election date, Communications Minister Roberto Viera had explained Tuesday that the constitution requires that the election be held no less than two months before a new president is scheduled to take office. That would be March 31.

The elections are now scheduled for March 19. The guerrillas want them delayed until Sept. 15, El Salvador’s independence day.

Although Duarte acknowledged that “for the first time in history the FMLN accepts that there are other ways besides violence to solve the country’s problems, and that is through elections, unfortunately it (the rebel proposal) is plagued with unconstitutionalities.”

Duarte also reiterated his insistence that the guerrillas give up their weapons before being allowed to participate in the elections, a demand that the rebels reject.

The president’s statements, along with other expressions of total rejection from right-wing party leaders and the military, and a more qualified negative reaction from the leaders of Duarte’s Christian Democratic Party, appear to leave no room for a start to the negotiations called for by the guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, as the group is known by its initials in Spanish.

The rejections appear to open the way for what sources close to the guerrillas say could be an all-out rebel offensive in the weeks ahead, although guerrilla leaders in Mexico City told The Times earlier Wednesday that they were willing to wait a week for an official answer.

Earlier Demands Dropped

In making its offer Tuesday, the FMLN also said it was renouncing previous demands for power-sharing and the integration of their 6,000 fighters with the 58,000-man Salvadoran army before they would accept elections. It called for negotiations that would reorganize the voting process.

However, although guerrilla leaders have explained several times that all points of their proposal are negotiable, they did not say they would stop fighting before the election or whether they would lay down their arms after the vote.

Duarte pointed to this omission when he said the rebels “are not proposing a dialogue. This is not a peace proposal, it is a proposal of war because in the second paragraph, there is a threat.”

Then he repeated his position about negotiating with the guerrillas, one that amounts to a flat refusal to deal with them on the basis of their proposal.

“I will talk to anyone who renounces violence. But first they must incorporate themselves into the democratic process, lay down their arms, and then I’ll talk to them.”

Other government officials said Duarte, who is suffering from terminal stomach cancer, has not been well enough to make a detailed study of the rebel plan and would issue a more complete analysis later. But, they said, he wanted to make it clear quickly that the FMLN plan was unacceptable.

Before the Duarte news conference, guerrilla officials in Mexico City told The Times that they anticipated rejection from right-wing parties in El Salvador but expected the government ultimately to agree to hold talks.

Their plan will garner tremendous international support, the guerrillas said.

Freed reported from San Salvador and Miller from Mexico City.