Salvador Chief Rejects Rebels’ Cease-Fire Plan

As air force planes bombarded columns of rebels on the skirts of the San Salvador volcano, President Alfredo Cristiani on Thursday rejected out of hand a cease-fire proposal offered by the guerrillas.

The aerial assault came amid reports of guerrilla reinforcements moving near the capital and as the government passed the first parts of a sweeping law aimed at punishing opposition political activities it views as subversive.

Cristiani, in a news conference with army Chief of Staff Col. Rene Emilio Ponce, said a guerrilla proposal to negotiate a cease-fire was “nothing more than a joke” and a tactic to give rebel forces time to regroup.

“The proposal is in no way serious,” Cristiani said.

The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) on Wednesday night made its first offer to negotiate a cease-fire since launching an offensive Nov. 11. It called on the United Nations to verify terms of the agreement.

The announcement fanned a small flurry of diplomatic movement aimed at reviving stalled peace talks. Venezuelan President Carlos Andres Perez met in Caracas with representatives of the Salvadoran government on Wednesday and was scheduled to see the rebels Thursday. The FMLN sent the proposal to the Organization of American States.

But sources in the Roman Catholic Church, which has served as mediator in the conflict, cautioned that it is too early to expect progress.

Cristiani reiterated his U.S.-backed government’s position that the rebels would have to suspend all hostilities before talks could resume.

As he spoke, air force helicopter gunships and other aircraft strafed and rocketed an area at the foot of a volcano about 3 1/2 miles from army headquarters. An A-37 jet dropped 500-pound bombs on the area, near a village called El Carmen, where military officials said some 300 rebels were regrouping.

The barrage startled Cristiani and at times drowned out his comments to a roomful of reporters.

Diplomats said that guerrilla reinforcements--including some who are joining this offensive for the first time--were approaching the southern perimeter of the city. And in San Miguel, 90 miles east of the capital, heavy fighting was reported near the headquarters of the army’s 3rd Brigade.

But a source close to the Salvadoran military minimized the ability of the guerrillas to launch another offensive, saying they had failed to inspire a popular uprising and had lost urban commando leaders and other experienced fighters so far.

“They are not capable of a replay of Nov. 11,” the source said.

The Salvadoran army in the last three days has received new shipments of U.S. supplies, ferried in on C-141 aircraft, including munitions, tear gas and helicopter parts, according to a diplomatic source.

El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly, dominated by Cristiani’s right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance, approved part of a 27-article law that establishes stiff prison terms for a wide range of political activities that “subvert order.” The sections passed Thursday restrict freedom of the press, television and even the use of graffiti.

Additional articles will be discussed today. The government says the law is necessary to combat the guerrillas, but critics charge that it will be used to muzzle journalists and other voices of opposition and castigate leftists, union organizers and legal unarmed opponents of the government.

Press censorship imposed Nov. 11 by the government as part of a state of siege already has claimed one victim.

Saying the restrictions had made it impossible to report the truth, one of El Salvador’s principal independent television stations, Channel 12, on Thursday yanked all its news programs off the air.

“We have been independent, and we want to preserve that independence,” said the station’s news director, Narciso Castillo. “If we cannot do that, then it is not worth existing.”

In the first two days of the state of siege, all television stations had to synchronize to a single government-run channel. For five days after that, Castillo said, an army lieutenant, operating inside the studio, censored every news broadcast.

This week, the government ordered the national press to adopt a five-point “self-censorship” plan, including a ban on any information whose source is the FMLN or “organizations that support it,” Castillo said. He said that could be broadly interpreted to include everyone from the Christian Democrats to the Catholic Church.

Channel 12, which broadcasts nationwide, suspended its three regular news programs and two talk shows. The four-year-old station had been one of a handful of independent stations that flourished during a recent period of political openness--an era that diplomats and other observers fear is ending.

Thursday, cartoons ran on Channel 12 instead of the news.

In another sign that the country may be moving backward, the bodies of three women and one man were found dumped at the gates of a cemetery Thursday morning. The women were in their underwear. All had extensive injuries to their heads and had been shot. They were not identified.

In the early 1980s, scores of bodies were found in similar fashion on street corners and in dumps. The deaths were attributed to right-wing death squads.