WORLD : El Salvador Bars U.S. Rights Worker

WASHINGTON —  Jim Wallace, a member of a U.S. emergency human rights mission, has been blocked from entering El Salvador for two days and is planning a protest at the airport outside San Salvador, a mission official said today.

Paul Davis, an aide to Congressman Joseph Kennedy (D-Mass.), said the rights activist was the tenth American--and the third from Kennedy’s congressional district--to be blocked from entry into El Salvador in a similar fashion in recent months. “They (Salvadoran authorities) are trying to discourage the humanitarian aid programs that U.S. citizens have set up in El Salvador,” Davis said in a telephone interview.

Wallace, a member of a five-member human rights delegation from U.S. sister-city programs, was stopped from entering El Salvador at the airport Sunday despite having a valid Salvadoran entry visa on his U.S. passport, said Nancy Ryan, a city official from Cambridge, Mass.