Salvador Rebels End Hotel Siege : Central America: Negotiators arrange a pullout by the guerrillas. The hotel guests are allowed to leave. Several U.S. military advisers were trapped for hours.

Leftist guerrillas staged a daring pre-dawn assault on the wealthy Escalon neighborhood Tuesday and seized part of the luxury Sheraton Hotel for 13 hours, trapping about 25 guests, including four U.S. military advisers and seven other Americans.

The siege apparently ended with a negotiated rebel withdrawal and the release of the captives.

The Salvadoran government and the International Red Cross said 17 civilians, including three Americans, were freed just after a 6 p.m. curfew and taken in a fleet of Red Cross ambulances to the relief agency’s headquarters here.

The others--at least four U.S. army advisers and four U.S. government consultants who were also armed--remained in the hotel overnight, a senior Salvadoran army official said. He said they feared harm by guerrilla snipers or mines if they left in the dark.

Reporters were forced off the street by the curfew and were unable to verify the outcome of the daylong siege of the hotel’s six-story VIP annex.

Marie Aude Lude, a Red Cross spokeswoman, said the deal was mediated by Msgr. Gregorio Rosa Chavez, the auxiliary Roman Catholic bishop of San Salvador.

The right-wing government and the rebel leadership accepted a one-hour cease-fire allowing the 20 or so rebels to retreat from the hotel annex into the night.

The assault marked a surprising turn of events in a sweeping urban guerrilla offensive launched Nov. 11. The rebels apparently are trying to force the U.S.-backed government of President Alfredo Cristiani to negotiate an end to the decade-old civil war.

Until Tuesday, most of the fighting had taken place across town in the poor, crowded neighborhoods on the northeastern perimeter of the capital, and the offensive appeared to be drawing to a close.

According to civilian and military sources, 50 to 150 rebels began Tuesday’s offensive at 4 a.m. in Escalon and neighboring San Benito, slipping down two gorges from the southern slope of the San Salvador volcano on the city’s western edge.

Ground fighting and aerial rocketing and strafing raged over scores of blocks in both neighborhoods throughout the day. The fighting left the Sheraton Hotel’s six-story VIP tower heavily pocked by gunfire and with most of its windows shattered. The hotel is no longer part of the American chain.

The hotel manager, Robert Nieuwveld, said at least two government soldiers died in fighting on the hotel grounds. Reporters saw at least 30 other soldiers wounded in the surrounding neighborhood.

Paul Iredale, a British journalist covering the fighting for Reuters news agency, was wounded in the lower back and treated at a hospital. He was listed in fair condition.

Nieuwveld said the rebels entered the lobby of the hotel’s main seven-story building about 4:30 a.m.

At noon, the Salvadoran army, backed by tanks and helicopters, evacuated the secretary general of the Organization of American States, Joao Baena Soares, and 19 other guests from the main building of the hotel. About 50 other guests there left on their own.

But the rebels kept control of the VIP tower about 50 yards behind the main building and on the other side of the swimming pool.

Journalists who made their way through army fire into the rebel-held tower about noon said they saw eight Americans hiding behind barricades of furniture on the fourth floor.

They were armed with M-16 automatic rifles. A Salvadoran military officer said that four of the Americans were U.S. military advisers on temporary duty. Forty-seven advisers are are now stationed here.

Another source said the four were members of the U.S. Army Special Forces from Ft. Bragg, N.C., who had been scheduled to leave for home Tuesday.

The other four armed Americans were retired public employees here on government contract to evaluate U.S. military training programs in El Salvador.

The rebels held all floors above and below the Americans but never entered their floor.

Rebel leaders denied that they were holding anyone hostage but never explained the objective of the hotel siege.

“They say they’re not holding them . . . but they don’t let them leave,” said the manager. “So what do you call that?”

The armed Americans trapped on the fourth floor allowed a Mexican television reporter to advance with his hands in the air.

“We are from the U.S. Embassy. We are trapped here,” said an American who did not give his name. “We don’t want to fight with them (the rebels).”

The bespectacled, 19-year-old rebel in charge of the operation told reporters: “All we want (with the Americans) is to talk to them and for them to turn over their weapons.”

It was clear throughout the day that both the guerrillas and U.S. officials were looking to avoid a confrontation.

A clandestine rebel broadcast called on foreign governments to refrain from using force to rescue their citizens because “our struggle is not with them.”

And U.S. Embassy spokesman Barry Jacobs said the guerrillas might not have planned to seize the hotel. He said they apparently got trapped there as the army countered their offensive. The U.S. Embassy refused further comment.

Nieuwveld said 25 guests were trapped, including five from Israel, five El Salvadorans and one each from Chile, Guatemala, Italy and West Germany.

The three other Americans were a U.S. Agency for International Development worker and an elderly couple registered as Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Miller.

The rebels told reporters they had been unaware that U.S. advisers were staying at the hotel when they launched the operation. They said their objective was to speak with Soares, a Brazilian, who arrived in El Salvador on Sunday to try to mediate a cease-fire between the government and the guerrillas.

The rebels said they telephoned Soares’ room on the seventh floor of the main building when they arrived, but he did not take their call.

Nieuwveld said a high-ranking guerrilla commander, Facundo Guardado, telephoned him twice during the morning from outside the hotel trying to negotiate an end to the siege.

Guardado, he said, demanded that the guerrillas inside be evacuated with Soares by Red Cross and Catholic church officials and be taken to the Vatican Embassy or Mexican Embassy.

Soares rejected that solution and left the hotel in a government armored personnel carrier.

The rebel offensive has left thousands of casualties and more than 20,000 homeless, most of them forced out of their houses in slum neighborhoods by relentless aerial attack by the Salvadoran air force.

The Escalon neighborhood, in western San Salvador, is home to much of the Salvadoran elite and foreign diplomatic corps. The rebels have long considered its high-walled mansions, swimming pools and tennis clubs to be a symbol of the nation’s ill-distributed wealth.

Except for heavy fighting on the first night of their offensive, the guerrillas had hardly touched Escalon.

“This is a new offensive that the FMLN is launching to see if (the army) is capable of bombing here like they did in the poor zones,” said a rebel commander who called himself Choco.

U.S. military advisers and foreign businessmen frequently stay at the Sheraton. In 1981, two American labor advisers and a Salvadoran government agrarian reform official were gunned down in the hotel’s coffee shop. Their deaths were attributed to a right-wing death squad.

More recently, the hotel had been considered secure from attack. Nieuwveld said private security guards were on duty when the attack began.

Neighbors described shelling and mortar fire in the pre-dawn hours and said the rebels had entered several houses. Both sides had sharpshooters throughout the lush, hilly neighborhood.

“Everybody’s hiding in their closets,” said a businessman who lives nearby.

The rebels said it is harder to fight in Escalon than in poor neighborhoods, where people help them with food and digging trenches. But the army also found it harder to maneuver on the ground, because the houses are too far apart and surrounded by walls.

When seven armored personnel carriers with machine guns rolled toward the hotel, a 20-year-old law student emerged from his house to applaud the troops from behind an iron gate.

“The army is protecting us,” he cheered. “We hate Commies.” He refused to give his name.

Troops from the Salvadoran army’s First Infantry Brigade and the elite Bracamonte Battalion moved into the zone. Throughout the afternoon they fired at the hotel, while helicopters fired rockets into a nearby ravine.

After a heavy and prolonged exchange of fire near the hotel about 11 a.m., several wounded people were evacuated from the San Antonio Abad neighborhood about five blocks away.

Max Antonio Hernandez, 26, said he was wounded along with five children when a grenade came through the roof of a house.

BACKGROUND

The United States now has 47 military advisers stationed in El Salvador. The overall number fluctuates but never exceeds a Pentagon-imposed limit of 55, set to ease fears in Congress of a Vietnam-style escalation of forces. The advisers were first sent to El Salvador in January, 1981. They train Salvadoran soldiers in patrolling, counterinsurgency techniques and other tactics. Under the command of the U.S. Southern Command in Panama, the advisers generally serve an 18-month tour. Based in the capital of San Salvador, they often travel in the countryside to advise Salvadoran army units. The rules of engagement for the Americans bar them from entering zones where combat is likely or from taking part in patrols. But if fired upon, they can fire back. The first American serviceman slain in El Salvador was Lt. Cmdr. Albert A. Schaufelberger III, deputy commander of the U.S. forces in El Salvador, who was killed in San Salvador on May 25, 1983. The first U.S. adviser killed was Staff Sgt. Gregory A. Fronius, who died in a rebel attack in March, 1987. Eleven other U.S. military personnel have been killed in El Salvador, five in shootings and six in a helicopter crash.

DELTA FORCE SENT IN--Members of the anti-terror unit advised Salvadoran forces. A10