Senators Warn Against a Hasty Cutoff of Aid to El Salvador

Senators from both sides of the political aisle cautioned Sunday against immediately moving to cut off U.S. aid to El Salvador, warning that warring extremists from both the right and the left would benefit from such a decision.

But the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Western Hemisphere subcommittee said that Salvadoran President Alfredo Cristiani will have to prove that his government is able to curb right-wing death squads and control rightist extremists if he wants to avert a full-scale aid cutoff in the near future.

“If in fact the status quo is maintained over the next six to eight weeks . . there’ll be 300 members of Congress lined up” to cut off assistance to El Salvador, said Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who was interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“What steps (Cristiani) takes in the next four to six weeks will be critically important in how Congress responds,” Dodd added.

Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.) said that Congress will want to see Cristiani’s government arrest and convict those who murdered six prominent Jesuit priests and two others last week.

“I think we’re going to see that,” Mack said.

Dodd said that Congress likely will impose conditions on further military aid next year unless there is “significant movement” toward reining in right-wing extremists.

“There are movements or steps you can take between doing nothing and cutting off aid,” he said.

Speaking on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley,” Defense Secretary Dick Cheney defended Cristiani’s government, saying “there’s no indication at all that the government of El Salvador had any involvement” in Thursday’s brutal slayings of the priests, their housekeeper and her daughter.

“We don’t know who did it,” Cheney said, adding that “there’s never been any indication that it was the government.”

Cheney said that the United States should “absolutely not” cut off about $90 million in military aid approved by Congress in September.

Mack said the slayings might have been the work of leftists hoping to discredit the rightist Cristiani government.