Salvadoran Rightist Terminally Ill With Cancer : Latin America: Roberto D’Aubuisson’s death could hinder efforts to reach a peace agreement.

Roberto D’Aubuisson, onetime reputed leader of El Salvador’s notorious right-wing death squads and still one of the country’s most powerful political leaders, is terminally ill with cancer, according to political and diplomatic sources.

“His death could happen in the next couple of months,” said one diplomat who has access to the medical condition of the 47-year-old cashiered army major and founder of El Salvador’s ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena) political party.

Armando Calderon Sol, president of Arena, told a news conference Friday that D’Aubuisson has a tumor in the area of his neck and shoulder, but he would not say how serious the illness was considered. Other sources, however, described it as terminal.

D’Aubuisson, who had gone to the United States four times for treatment, was readmitted to a Houston hospital earlier this week after his latest tests showed a marked deterioration of his condition, sources said.

Although D’Aubuisson is considered by diplomats and human rights organizations to be responsible for a wave of terror that killed tens of thousands of people at the hands of military and civilian right-wing death squads in the early 1980s, his death now would come as a serious blow to efforts both to achieve a peace agreement with Marxist rebels and to cement moves to reform Arena into a more moderate political force.

“This throws a spanner into the works,” said one diplomat. “For all his past offenses (which includes a charge by some U.S. officials that D’Aubuisson plotted to assassinate a former American ambassador), for the last year and a half he has been a brake on those in the party” who have tried to sabotage peace negotiations with the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) as well as to undermine the relatively moderate policies of President Alfredo Cristiani.

According to sources, D’Aubuisson, a heavy smoker and hard drinker, was found to have cancer of the tongue last March. At that time, doctors said the prognosis was good, and they predicted that localized radiation treatment would eliminate the disease.

However, when the cancer spread farther into the mouth, his American doctors said he had only a 50% chance of living five years. That gloomy forecast darkened this week, sources said, when additional tumors appeared in his throat and other parts of the body.

“I’m told he will die within a few months,” said another diplomat, “maybe in two months, maybe in six, but he can’t survive.”

Because of his record, D’Aubuisson is allowed in the United States only with special permission, which has been given solely for treatment in a Houston hospital.

Although D’Aubuisson founded Arena as a hard-line, radical rightist party and even campaigned twice for president on a platform blatantly calling for the violent elimination of the FMLN and those whom he considered rebel sympathizers, his recent position has been far more pragmatic.

He picked Cristiani, an apolitical and moderate businessman, as the party’s presidential candidate in the 1989 elections and has publicly stated that Arena must move to the center if it is to maintain political dominance.

Even some of his bitterest opponents, including moderate political leaders such as Ruben Zamora, who blames D’Aubuisson for the murder of his brother, now say the onetime military intelligence officer has kept the hard-line right under control.

But that dominance appears to be slipping. From the first reports of D’Aubuisson’s illness, elements of Arena began maneuvering for power, political sources said. “That was natural,” said one diplomat, “but what was worrisome and a sign of what is likely to happen came during his first trip to Houston.”

While he was absent that time, a self-proclaimed death squad distributed pamphlets in San Salvador threatening U.N. human rights observers, members of Arena who support Cristiani’s peace negotiations and “treasonous” military officers backing the talks with the FMLN.

Political and diplomatic sources say these threats were the work of Vice President Jose Francisco Merino; Sigifredo Ochoa, national assemblyman and former army colonel, and a retired air force commander, Gen. Raphael Bustillo. Merino gave a public speech criticizing the peace negotiations.

All three men have been linked to death squads and profess radical-right policies, including an all-out war against the FMLN and its civilian supporters.

“When he returned, D’Aubuisson chastised Merino and Ochoa in front of other (Arena) party leaders,” said one diplomat, and that put an end to such acts, at least for the time being.

However, new threats have arisen recently, apparently timed to the increasingly pessimistic reports of D’Aubuisson’s health. “If these guys get up a head of steam and he’s not around (to hold them in check), that’s not good,” said one senior ambassador.

“There’s enough nervousness already over the peace process,” the envoy said of the efforts to reach a cease-fire with the FMLN, negotiations opposed by right-wing politicians and many mid-level and some senior military officers.