Latin Summit Assails Salvador Rebel Tactics : Central America: The presidents of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua say the warfare is affecting the entire region.

El Salvador’s Central American neighbors Monday condemned a month-old leftist guerrilla offensive against the Salvadoran government and called for a cease-fire and revival of face-to-face talks to end the 11-year war.

The statement by the presidents of Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua was their strongest censure of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front. It reflected their concern that continued warfare in El Salvador is impeding an ambitious project to integrate the impoverished region’s economies.

Central American leaders said their declaration, read at the end of a five-nation summit, was meant to persuade the FMLN to halt its attacks so that full-scale peace talks can resume. Direct negotiations were last held Oct. 31, but United Nations mediator Alvaro de Soto has been shuttling between the two sides ever since.

The FMLN has said its attacks since Nov. 20--which have left more than 300 people dead and two government warplanes downed by surface-to-air missiles--are intended to force Salvadoran President Alfredo Cristiani to trim the armed forces and punish military officers for human rights violations as a prelude to a cease-fire.

But the summit declaration rebuffed the guerrillas and avoided criticizing well-documented abuses by the Salvadoran military or civilian casualties caused by air force bombings. It gave Cristiani a one-sided endorsement of what it called his “repeated and permanent efforts” to end the war through negotiation.

“The process of dialogue to achieve peace has been blocked by the persistent violent actions of the FMLN . . . that have caused pain and death among Salvadoran civilians and grave damage to the country’s economic infrastructure,” the four presidents said.

They urged the guerrillas to stop using their new anti-aircraft weapons and to respect El Salvador’s legislative elections next March.

They asked U.N. peacekeeping forces to stay in the region, beyond a mandate expiring this month, and monitor weapon flows to the rebels. And they offered to join U.N. mediators in seeking terms for a settlement.

Welcoming the statement, Cristiani said, “The channels of negotiation are open.” He repeated his willingness to put reform of the army atop the agenda for peace talks.

Ana Guadalupe Martinez, an FMLN spokeswoman in Mexico City, said the summit communique “was to be expected from such a homogeneous forum.” She said the presidents’ call for an immediate cease-fire contradicts an April agreement between the government and the rebels to negotiate a political accord first. Despite the offensive, she insisted, “there is no stagnation” of U.N. mediation efforts.

A Costa Rican official said the presidents might sway the FMLN “because they have some moral authority with (the guerrillas). The guerrillas must see how isolated they are. Nobody is buying their offensive or the justification they give for it.”

Under former Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez, the region’s leaders helped settle the Contra war in Nicaragua. Their negotiations led to elections last February that ended leftist Sandinista rule there and to the subsequent disarming of U.S.-backed anti-Sandinista rebels.

The five current presidents, all elected conservative civilians, are trying to turn their collective efforts to economics. At their previous summit last June, they created an Economic Community of the Central American Isthmus to coordinate trade policies, debt management, food production, environmental protection and the quest for foreign aid for their 30 million people.

But the new surge of fighting in El Salvador dominated the three-day meeting at this Pacific beach resort. One rebel attack last week forced 200 Salvadoran soldiers to retreat into Honduras, reviving that nation’s memories of the spill-over into its territory from the Nicaraguan war.

“If there is no peace in El Salvador, there can be no economic security in Central America,” said Honduran President Rafael L. Callejas. “Our dreams of free trade and unrestricted movement of people are a fallacy as long as there is conflict just across the border.”

Even so, the presidents took modest steps here to give substance to their vaguely defined economic initiative. They set a deadline at the end of 1992 for lowering tariff and trade barriers among their countries to a uniform rate and eased visa requirements for officials, businessmen and professionals traveling from one country to another.

They agreed to submit inventories of military manpower and hardware in each country by Feb. 26--a step toward mutual arms reductions. Within 90 days, they promised a regional environmental plan to halt deforestation and the dumping of toxic wastes.

The summit document welcomed President Bush’s Enterprise for the Americas proposal to create a hemispheric free-trade zone.