PERSPECTIVE ON EL SALVADOR : For Lasting Peace, Dump the Army : Democracy, justice and economic health will remain out of reach until the country rids itself of the military.

The Salvadoran government and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, preparing for their fifth round of U.N.-mediated negotiations, have begun to tackle the most difficult issue on their agenda: demilitarization of El Salvador.

To no one’s surprise, little progress has been made in the negotiations. The government’s unwillingness to consider changes in the armed forces has produced a deadlock, which we in the FMLN hope is only temporary.

Our critics ask: Aren’t the FMLN’s demands on the military too tough, perhaps to the point of being unreasonable? Wouldn’t it be better if the FMLN allowed the negotiations to proceed and produce agreements on other matters before attempting to solve the problem of the armed forces?

Our position on the military is tough indeed, but for good reasons. Ending the war is the immediate goal of the negotiations, but the ultimate goal is the elimination of the social and economic conditions that created the war in the first place.

The war in El Salvador is a political conflict, a conflict of power. At stake is the question of who gets to set the rules of the game in Salvadoran society. The FMLN’s answer is very simple: The rules should be determined and implemented by the majority of the people through truly democratic institutions, not through the violent imposition of the military’s will, which has been the historic reality of our country.

This transfer of power to the people is the essence of our proposal. We are committed to the democratization of El Salvador, and an immense obstacle to that is the corrupt and exclusionary rule by the military on behalf of the interests of an economic elite. The FMLN took up the armed struggle precisely to break this illegitimate monopoly of power and give democracy a real chance.

The FMLN is not going to settle for cosmetic or merely quantitative changes in the military. We know better than that. Decades ago, the army was much smaller, and yet it managed to establish and sustain a dictatorial regime. Since then, the military has shown its capacity to grow in both numbers and brutality in direct proportion to the growing social unrest it created. What would prevent this from happening over and over again? What will spare El Salvador the experience of having its government held hostage to the constant threat of military coups? What will impede the Pinochets of El Salvador in their commitment to obstruct justice?

The military is so pervasive in all aspects of our political, social and economic life that total demilitarization is absolutely necessary if we are to construct a modern democratic state. Only through demilitarization will El Salvador be able to create a pluralistic parliament--a true representative democracy, which has never before existed in our country. Only through demilitarization will it be possible for us to create a modern and efficient judicial system, one that is backed by a civilian and professional national police force.

When we speak of demilitarization we mean a complete process involving both parties to the negotiations. We are proposing a gradual, symmetrical and simultaneous process to dismantle and eliminate both armies and create a new civilian police force, as Costa Rica has.

Without a comprehensive agreement on this issue, there is every reason to believe that other agreements will not be honored. As we have seen, the military has ultimate veto power. This is why it is so crucial, as difficult as it may be, to deal with this issue first. Only then can we proceed to establish and enforce a cease-fire. If we reversed this process, the cease-fire would certainly be broken and each party would continue to be a threat to the other.

The truth of the matter is that negotiations are not founded on trust. Negotiations are about creating the conditions that are necessary to build trust in a country deeply divided by years of war and decades of conflict.