Salvador Peace Talks Deadlock Over Future of Military

Salvadoran government and rebel negotiators ended six days of U.N.-mediated peace talks on Wednesday deadlocked in what one participant called “a dialogue of the deaf” over the future of the military.

Each side accused the other of intransigence.

Rebels of the Farbundo Marti National Liberation Front said the stalemate over the issue of reforms within the Salvadoran armed forces made escalation of the war imminent.

Another round of talks was set for Sept. 13 in San Jose.

The two sides agreed earlier this year to pursue accords permitting a mid-September cease-fire. U.N. mediator Alvaro DeSoto acknowledged, as delegation members did earlier, that absence of agreement here made that virtually impossible.

“Escalation of military action is almost inevitable as a result of the government’s intransigence and the absence of progress,” FMLN delegate Salvador Samayoa said after the talks ended at the tourist resort of San Antonio de Belen, eight miles northwest of San Jose. “We’re speaking two different languages. It is a dialogue of the deaf.”

Francisco Mena, a senior guerrilla field commander, said, “The picture is this: We’re getting nowhere in negotiations, so let’s have at it with the irons.”

The rebels have submitted an 18-point document. The first demand is for “total demilitarization of society, by means of disappearance of the two armies.”

The conservative administration of President Alfredo Cristiani, backed by the United States, says it is willing to “restructure,” reform and reduce the armed forces but not to abolish them.

Justice Minister Oscar Santamaria, the chief government negotiator, characterized the rebel position as “a setback” from the position advanced last month.

Army Col. Mauricio Vargas, also a government negotiator, termed the new document “a low blow.”

The nearly 11-year-old civil war has caused the deaths of about 75,000 people, most of them civilians.

The FMLN insists on an end to impunity for the military for violations of human rights. International rights organizations have blamed the military and military-linked death squads for the deaths of up to 30,000 suspected opponents in the last 10 years. But not one officer has been tried for such a crime.

The rebels demand also a purge of the high command to ensure subordination to civilian authority and to guard against abuses by a reformed security force.

The rebels propose that a civilian-led police force be created to take the place of the army, following the lead of Costa Rica. Costa Rica abolished its army in 1949 and is the only Central American land that has enjoyed peace, relative prosperity and democracy in recent decades.

In previous talks, the rebels demanded trial and punishment of officers implicated in four notorious human rights cases, including the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and last November’s massacre of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter.

The new document adds demands for punishment of those responsible for two other cases and for “murders, massacres and bombardments of civilians that have occurred during the negotiation.” It seeks investigations to determine responsibility for 20 other specific crimes in addition to “all the crimes, murders, disappearances and massacres committed since 1979.”