Salvador and Rebels Near Pact but No Communique Is Signed

The government of El Salvador and rebel commanders are close to an agreement that could eventually lead to an end to the bloody 12-year Salvadoran civil war, sources said Tuesday. But the two sides recessed their negotiations Tuesday night without signing an expected communique.

U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar has been meeting with both sides alternately in his 38th-floor office for a week, and the sources said that both sides had accepted his main proposals for breaking an impasse in their negotiations.

A communique had been expected, but the failure to sign one made it clear that details still needed to be ironed out.

The leftist rebels have been seeking guarantees that they can be integrated into Salvadoran life without danger and can be assured of reforms in Salvadoran institutions to change their record of repression and violations of human rights.

Rebel commanders had demanded the integration of their guerrillas into the regular army as a guarantee of safety, but they evidently accepted an alternative plan offered by Perez de Cuellar.

Perez de Cuellar proposed that El Salvador create a new police force separate from the army and that rebel officers and soldiers be allowed to join this force.

Salvadoran U.N. Ambassador Ricardo Castaneda-Cornejo told reporters earlier in the day that an agreement in principle had been reached and that the communique would be signed later. He also said that the two sides intend to meet again with the secretary general Oct. 15 to prepare the final peace settlement.

But Castaneda-Cornejo’s optimism was somewhat premature, just as Salvadoran President Alfredo Cristiani’s had been a day earlier. Cristiani told the U.N. General Assembly that peace was “very close at hand,” only to have this hope dampened by later comments from the rebel commanders and Perez de Cuellar.

Sources said there have been numerous knotty questions, exacerbated by the enmity between the rebel Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and Cristiani’s right-wing party, Arena. One question, for example, is at what point in the peace process a cease-fire should go into effect.

The civil war between the rebels and a series of American-backed governments has killed perhaps 75,000 people, most of them civilians, in the Central American country of 5.3 million.