Not Quite at Hand, but Close : El Salvador: Perhaps the greatest virtue of the new peace agreement is that it is realistic.

The agreement reached this week between the government of El Salvador and the FMLN insurgents may well bring the country’s 11-year-old civil war to an end. For the first time, the U.N.-brokered talks reached substantial conclusions on key issues: the cleansing and reduction of the armed forces; the integration of the guerrillas into a new national police force; a locked-in land reform program, and a new policy and concept regarding the training and education of the country’s military.

Perhaps the greatest virtue of the five-point deal is that it is realistic. For the first time, the guerrillas have accepted the pre-eminence of the army: A war took place, and the army was not defeated; it stays in place, albeit overhauled, reduced in size and cleansed of its most repugnant members and features. The army, for its part, acknowledged what guerrilla commander Joaquin Villalobos emphasized when I interviewed him in Mexico City two weeks ago: “No one, not even ourselves (the FMLN commanders) can take our combatants’ arms away from them unless they are defeated on the battlefield.”

Under the agreement, as sketched out in New York on Wednesday, the combatants will be allowed to return to civilian life or to join the new national police force, which will replace all existing “security corps,” both government and guerrilla, in the country. By agreeing to this, President Alfredo Cristiani has accepted a fact of life: The rebels built up a functional army, and the government’s armed forces were unable to defeat it, despite huge infusions of U.S. aid, arms and technical assistance.

Clearly, much ground remains to be covered. The agreement itself says little about how the new civilian police force will be formed; nor does it specify how the commission in charge of restructuring the army will approach its task. Moreover, although everything seems to indicate that a cease-fire will be agreed upon at the negotiators’ next meeting on Oct. 12, the war is not officially over. One cannot discount the depth of feelings engendered by a war in which 70,000 people, mostly civilians, died, and at least 1 million were left homeless or driven into exile.

Whether the agreement will actually bring peace to El Salvador depends on the resolution of three long-term issues. The first has to do with resistance, which exists in both camps, but is sure to be stronger on the government side. The military’s concession is, in a sense, far more disruptive of morale than the guerrillas’: Accepting that the insurgents will not lay down all of their arms, or even most, and will become part of an institutional armed corps, is something that will not go down well in San Salvador. On the very night the agreement was announced, there was talk of rejecting it, even talk of a coup, but this is understandable. On the guerrilla side, once those who actually have to give up their weapons are apprised of this situation, there will be reluctance, which is also understandable, and perhaps problems will surface.

The second issue involves the possibility of reaching a basic consensus on economic and social matters related to the transition to peace. The New York agreement includes provisions for land reform in the guerrilla-occupied territories, and it refers to “measures necessary to reduce the social costs of structural adjustment” as well as to “foreign cooperation.” But it seems evident that without some sort of consensus on how to rebuild a nation after 11 years of war, it will be difficult for any agreement to stick, particularly among parties used to settling their differences with M-16s.

Finally, support from abroad will be crucial. Reorientation of military personnel on both sides, care for the wounded and permanently disabled, credit and technical assistance for those receiving land, and for rebuilding a destroyed infrastructure--the cost will not be insignificant.

Peace is not at hand in El Salvador, but it’s pretty close. The U.N. mediator, Alvaro DeSoto, culminated an extraordinarily skillful, patient, perseverant effort with an innovative, well-balanced agreement, undoubtedly intrusive to some degree but respectful of both sides’ real interests. For the first time in recent Latin American history, a civil war ends without winners or losers, but simply with an agreement by the two sides to continue their struggle by other means. Standing Clausewitz on his head, and making politics the continuation of war by other means, is no minor achievement.