Opening in El Salvador

The U.S. State Department is taking seriously an offer by leaders of El Salvador’s guerrilla movement to participate peacefully in presidential elections later this year. A spokesman says that the government of President Jose Napoleon Duarte shares Washington’s view of the proposal. It should be taken seriously enough for Duarte to call for resumption of negotiations with the rebels.

Previously the five guerrilla groups that make up the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front had refused to accept the legitimacy of the elections scheduled for March 19. They have been fighting the Salvadoran political system for almost 10 years, striking at governments run both by military juntas and, more recently, by U.S.-backed civilian leaders like Duarte. FMLN leaders insisted that their popular support could not be measured by voting, and they refused to lay down their arms until they were granted a share of political power in El Salvador.

Their offer to reverse that stance caught both the Duarte government and the Bush Administration--still trying to get settled in Washington--by surprise, although it is encouraging to see the White House recover so nimbly. The rebels did not change their position on giving up their arms, but they are willing to stop fighting for five days before the voting, to agree not to interfere with campaigning or balloting as they have done in past elections, and to accept the outcome of the vote. In return, they ask that the election be postponed until September and that the government guarantee the safe participation of their political representatives in the electoral process.

The initial reaction in San Salvador was disappointingly legalistic. Government officials said that the voting cannot be postponed under the Salvadoran constitution. They seemed to overlook the fact that El Salvador’s current constitution is only a few years old and was written under wartime conditions. Such documents can be revised when circumstances warrant, and this may be such a case.

Duarte should brush aside extreme rightists and military leaders who want to reject the plan, and he should use the proposal as an opening to resume the dialogue that he began with the guerrillas three years ago and that has recently been stalled. The State Department’s reaction certainly would strengthen Duarte’s hand in any confrontation with the Salvadoran right. The United States provides about half the revenue that the Salvadoran government needs to operate--not just to wage its counterinsurgency effort but also to feed its people. That alone should discourage extreme elements from trying to interfere in any way with the chances for peace.

More than 60,000 persons have died in the 10 years since the Salvadoran civil war broke out, and one-fifth of that small nation’s 5 million people have been displaced by the fighting. For the last several months, since it was revealed that Duarte is dying of cancer, there has been no movement toward peace in the country. In fact, the war has actually escalated, with renewed atrocities committed by both sides. Until the rebel offer was made public, the prospects for an improvement of any sort in El Salvador were bleak. Now there is a glimmer of real hope that must not be extinguished without being fully explored.