Right-Wing Salvadoran Politician Killed in Ambush : Central America: Army blames rebels for the death of the former Supreme Court president.

A right-wing politician who was a former president of the Salvadoran Supreme Court was gunned down in his car at a busy intersection Tuesday.

Francisco Jose Guerrero, 64, a leader of the conservative National Conciliation Party, was ambushed at mid-morning and shot in the chest, according to army and hospital officials. He died minutes later at a local hospital.

An ally of the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena), Guerrero was an adviser to the government’s commission for dialogue with the guerrillas. He had served in several administrations as foreign minister, president of the Legislative Assembly and minister of the presidency, before heading the Supreme Court for five years under former President Jose Napoleon Duarte.

The army chief of staff, Col. Rene Emilio Ponce, blamed the killings on Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) rebels, who launched the largest offensive of the decade-old war Nov. 11. There was no immediate response from the rebels.

The murder followed renewed fighting between the guerrillas and government troops in the northern neighborhoods of Mejicanos and Ciudad Delgado. At least four guerrillas died and four soldiers were wounded in overnight combat in Mejicanos that forced scores of families to flee their homes.

Guerrero was the first right-wing politician assassinated since a wave of killings of prominent rightists earlier this year.

President Alfredo Cristiani’s closest adviser, Jose Antonio Rodriguez Porth, was gunned down outside his home June 9, a week after the president took office. The rebels denied responsibility for that assassination.

The guerrillas did, however, take responsibility for the killing of the Arena-appointed attorney general, Roberto Garcia Alvadora, last April. Garcia Alvadora died when assassins bombed his car as he was being driven to work.

Joaquin Villalobos, one of the five commanders of the Farabundo Marti front, defended the killing of Garcia Alvadora in an interview last September in Mexico. Villalobos said the attorney general was killed because he had blocked prosecution of the 1980 assassination of the archbishop of San Salvador, Msgr. Oscar Arnulfo Romero.

“Because of his defense of death squads, he was a legitimate target,” Villalobos said.

Romero’s murder by an alleged right-wing paramilitary group helped spark this nation’s civil war.

Under Guerrero’s leadership, the Salvadoran Supreme Court last December ruled against a request to extradite a key witness in the case from the United States. The court also said there were no legal grounds for arresting Alvaro Saravia if he were returned to El Salvador.

In November, 1987, then-President Duarte publicized testimony from Amado Garay, the reputed driver of the getaway car in the Romero killing, in which he said he had worked for Saravia, a retired air force captain and associate of the Arena party’s founder, retired Maj. Roberto D’Aubuisson.

As a lawyer, Guerrero also worked for cotton growers to fight agrarian reform laws and has long been identified with right-wing causes. In 1984, he ran for president against Duarte and D’Aubuisson, but in a second round he threw his party’s votes to Duarte in exchange for the Supreme Court post.

Guerrero’s killing comes nearly two weeks after the murders of six Jesuit priests at the Central American University. Roman Catholic Church officials have said they believe that the army is responsible for the killings, which took place in a militarized zone during a nighttime curfew.