El Salvador OKs Reforms Designed to End Civil War

El Salvador’s outgoing legislature late Monday approved constitutional reforms that are considered crucial to a prompt end to the country’s 11-year-old civil war.

The reforms, most of which emerged from recent government-guerrilla peace talks, would diminish the autonomy of the military, which has been blamed for many rights abuses; strengthen the feeble judiciary system, and make changes in the electoral system.

The 60-member General Assembly said the reforms demonstrate its “firm objective and duty to quickly advance toward establishment of peace, national reconciliation and the reunification of Salvadoran society.”

Constitutional reform has been a principal item on the agenda of year-old U.N.-mediated peace talks between the rightist government of President Alfredo Cristiani and leftist rebels of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.

The reforms approved by the legislature were based--in most cases word for word--on a document produced during three weeks of intense peace negotiations this month in Mexico City.

Today was the deadline for peace negotiators and legislators to draft and approve constitutional reforms.