Baker Angered by Killings, Backs Salvador Arms Aid : Guerrilla war: He wants congressional curbs on assistance lifted and the rebels brought to justice.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III on Sunday denounced as “absolutely outrageous” the apparent murder of two U.S. servicemen by Salvadoran rebels and said that the Administration will seek to lift congressional restrictions on military aid to El Salvador.

“We should make a strong effort to bring these people to justice--indict them and bring them to justice,” Baker said of the guerrillas who allegedly shot to death at close range two soldiers who survived the crash-landing of their helicopter last Tuesday.

Baker made clear that the Administration will use the issue to try to restore $42.5 million in military aid to the right-wing Salvadoran government. Congress blocked the funds last year after the Salvadoran army was implicated in the killings of six Jesuit priests and two other people in November, 1989.

Last Tuesday’s killing of the American servicemen occurred at a crucial time for the funding decision.

Under requirements that Congress attached last year to legislation for $85 million in military aid for El Salvador, President Bush is scheduled to report this week on whether the Salvadoran rebels are refusing to cooperate with peace efforts or engaging in attacks on civilians. If he certifies to Congress that either is the case, $42.5 million in aid frozen by Congress will be released.

“You have a bunch of rebels here who are trying to reverse the decision of the ballot box with bullets and bayonets, and now they’re going beyond that and murdering Americans in cold blood,” Baker said on ABC-TV’s “This Week with David Brinkley.”

Although the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front claimed responsibility for downing the low-flying helicopter, it said its forces did not know that it was an American craft and it denied executing the two men. The rebel group, which earlier had issued conflicting explanations, said that it is conducting its own “exhaustive investigation” and will make public its findings.

An obviously angry Baker said the men “were not killed when their helicopter was shot down. They were murdered by the FMLN--at least two of them, for sure.”

U.S. Ambassador William G. Walker raised the possibility of trying the alleged killers, if they are apprehended, before a court in the United States.

“Those who committed this act, who murdered our colleagues, perpetrated a war crime,” Walker said.

On Sunday, a U.S. Air Force transport headed for Dover, Del., carrying the bodies of Lt. Col. David H. Pickett, 40; Chief Warrant Officer Daniel S. Scott, 39, and Pfc. Earnest G. Dawson, 20. Autopsies, conducted by forensic experts from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, concluded that Pickett and Dawson had been “murdered in cold blood . . . executed by the guerrillas,” Walker said. Scott was found to have died in the crash.

Their helicopter, a UH-1H Huey, crash-landed after being hit by rebel gunfire near the village of Lolotique in the eastern province of San Miguel. The helicopter and crew were part of a supply and transport operation based in Honduras but used extensively in El Salvador.

El Salvador’s top Roman Catholic official, Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas, said Sunday that information collected at the crash site by church investigators “gives grounds to presume” that Dawson and Pickett had been murdered by FMLN members.

He said that the two men “were rescued by peasants on the order of guerrilla elements, but afterward there is a very grave presumption they were murdered, because when the same witnesses returned, they found (the two men) dead and with signs of shooting which had not been there before.”

Baker urged countries “who have been giving refuge to these rebels” to throw them out. He did not name any countries but the Nicaraguan military, still controlled by the leftist Sandinistas, has been allowing FMLN members to use one of its bases for command and control purposes.

Baker acknowledged continuing complaints about human rights abuses by El Salvador’s government, saying: “Yes, we’ve got some complaints there and we’ll address those.

“But it is absolutely outrageous that these (rebels) would kill two American servicemen with shots--automatic weapons and shots to the head--after they’re captured when their helicopter is shot down.”

The FMLN has been under severe international criticism for its recent intensification of fighting in El Salvador’s decade-long civil war. It is not clear what impact the killings will have on cease-fire negotiations between the government and the rebels. Both sides had agreed to resume peace talks later this month after an impasse of more than three months.

BACKGROUND

The United States has been backing successive Salvadoran governments in their 11-year civil war with the Marxist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front rebels. The war has cost more than 72,000 lives, mostly civilians. The U.S. government has provided more than $3.6 billion in economic and military aid to the Central American nation since 1980, about $1 billion of it being military. There are currently 50 U.S. military advisers in the country.