Salvador Peace Hopes Seen as Wishful Thinking : Central America: Key obstacle is rebel insistence that 200 army officers be punished for crimes. Guerrillas are expected to seek political control in their strongholds.

Despite optimistic reports of progress in the peace talks between the Salvadoran government and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, hopes for a negotiated end to the 10-year-old civil war seem to be based not so much on the evidence as on wishful thinking.

This is the view expressed by government officials, military figures, diplomats and sources close to the guerrillas.

The insurmountable obstacle, as they see it, is the rebel FMLN’s insistence that the army dismiss and punish as many as 200 officers for human rights abuses and war crimes.

“If the guerrillas put forth a list of 200 guys for removal, it just won’t happen,” a Western diplomat with close contacts to the government and the military said the other day. “There will be absolutely no sweeping removal of officers or trials.”

This hard-line view was echoed by a military source who said, “Even if there are some corrupt or bad officers, no one can expect the institution to accept a purge list from the enemy.”

The best that could happen, diplomats and government sources say, is the gradual removal of some of the officers identified by the FMLN, but unofficially and without a schedule.

“A year from now,” the diplomat said, “the most notorious bad eggs will be gone. . . . I think there is a corps of officers seen as corrupt, abusers, etc., the majority of whom will be gone before an agreement is reached. The government won’t want to be seen as giving in to the guerrilla demands.”

While this may appear to be a reasonable response, not even those who say it could happen believe that it will be acceptable to the rebels, even though they have backed steadily away from their original demands of political power-sharing and the dismantling of the entire military structure.

“I’m not assured that the guerrillas will accept what they can get in these talks,” the diplomat said.

An associate added, “After 10 years of fighting and thinking they can win or transform the society, I don’t see them accepting an agreement that only gives them the right to take part in politics.”

Sources close to the rebels agreed, and said it is particularly true if they perceive that the government is not serious about full political participation.

“For instance,” one source said, “the guerrillas want basically to take full political control of the area where they are strongest (about a third of the country). That means they don’t want any military or central government presence. That way they can build an organizing base for quick electoral victories and later expansion.”

Government officials and some military officers say this is unacceptable, and Washington has made it clear that it will not provide any development or economic aid to areas from which the government is excluded.

Although the FMLN has indicated that political participation is now a major goal, the issue of military reform is the controlling factor with the guerrilla leaders.

This view was stated most forcefully by Schafik Jorge Handal, one of the top five FMLN commanders, in a radio debate earlier this month. The guerrilla movement, he said, “will not sign a pact ending the hostilities while the army continues giving refuge to the beasts who ordered the blood bath in El Salvador.”

A Latin American diplomat who is privy to FMLN thinking said: “This is not just boasting or something for effect in the talks. The commanders think they have given up more than enough.”

In addition, he said, the rebels think the United States should support them since the U.S. Embassy here has said repeatedly, although not publicly, that it wants to see military reform and the removal of the same officers targeted by the guerrillas.

U.S. officials deny any commonality of interests with the rebels. They say that although some officers have abused their positions, it is unrealistic to expect what the FMLN is demanding.

These officials point out that it has been more than a year since reports surfaced that officers to whom the embassy objected would be removed, but that with few exceptions nothing has happened, even though the civilian president, Alfredo Cristiani, supposedly agreed with the American position.

The optimism developed after the second round of peace talks ended in late June, in Mexico City, and has been fed by reports that the army is willing to give way on other rebel demands in the peace talks that were resumed Friday in Costa Rica.

The army, besides indicating a vague willingness to permit the FMLN full political participation, including organizing unions and similar support groups, is also leaking reports of agreement in theory to proposals to separate the nation’s various police forces from military control and to reduce the army from its current force level of 57,000 men.

“What is going on here,” a Salvadoran political expert said, “is a developing momentum that is slowly reducing the FMLN’s options as the government makes concessions that really don’t touch on the final issue, which is the role the military will actually have if the war ends. Some people say this is the way negotiations work as one side or the other takes advantage of its strength and tries to protect its weakness. I think on the government side it is more a question of deception masking a belief that if the rebels won’t give in in the talks, they can be defeated militarily.”

No government official will publicly acknowledge that he believes this, but European diplomats said that some officials, particularly some army leaders, have indicated in private that they think the guerrillas were so badly hurt in last November’s offensive that they can no longer mount a serious military operation.

Many diplomats agree that the rebels are going to be faced with an unpleasant choice: accept a peace that does not meet their most basic demand or resume a war that has not achieved anything resembling military success or political power.

U.S. officials say they are not assuming that the guerrillas are beaten.

“They have the ability to fight, to cause damage for a long time,” one said. “But as time goes on, events are leading to a precluding of options.”

“If that is what they believe,” a source close to the guerrillas said, “they are probably right, but that shouldn’t lead to the conclusion that the FMLN will give in. In fact, just the opposite. If you remove all their options except surrender, they won’t.”