El Salvador : Cristiani’s Private Pact With Rebels Stalls Truce Accord

President Alfredo Cristiani’s efforts to sell an agreement he reached with the Salvadoran guerrillas are stumbling over resistance within the military and his own political party arising from his failure to quickly reveal a private understanding he signed separately with the rebels, according to diplomatic and other sources.

Cristiani’s private accord allows the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front much greater access and involvement in a new national police force than the president initially reported after a set of public agreements was reached last week at the United Nations.

That pact, called “The New York Agreement,” has opened the way to specific negotiations for a cease-fire and an end to that country’s 12-year-old civil war. Among other things, it said that the police force will be selected on a “pluralistic and non-discriminatory” basis.

At the time, Cristiani said publicly that members of the FMLN, as the rebel movement is known, would not be allowed any special consideration in joining the police force, and he privately expressed the doubt that many ex-guerrillas would meet the necessary qualifications.

However, the private agreement--signed the same day as the public documents but still not publicly acknowledged by Cristiani--clearly outlined what some observers call “an affirmative action program for the FMLN.”

The criteria for admission to the police, the understanding said, will include “the cultural level and/or the zones where the personnel will be recruited and will be placed.”

This “clearly gives the FMLN the right to special considerations in admissions,” said a diplomat. “What is particularly important is that the guerrillas have the right to join and serve in the areas where they are strong.”

This flies in the face of concerns by such powerful figures as Vice President Francisco Merino, the editors of El Diario del Hoy newspaper and army officers who argue that Cristiani had promised there would be no special guerrilla role in the new police.

“Either by design or inadvertence, Cristiani held back from some very important people exactly what he had agreed to in New York,” said one veteran political figure close to the military. “ . . . That could hurt him.”

The police issue is crucial to the guerrillas on various levels.

In the official accord, both sides accept the existence of a small professional army but specify that it will have no internal security functions; that would be left to the new police force.

“The military police were seen as agents of repression and murder in the countryside and were used politically,” said Ruben Zamora, the leader of the leftist Democratic Convergence political movement. “It is important to the FMLN that the new police, especially in the area where the FMLN are most active, play a different role.”

More important in the short run is the role the new police will play in the disarming of the FMLN, one of the expected results of the cease-fire that both sides hope to see by year’s end.

U.N. mediators and the government say the disarming and demobilization of the guerrillas should be accomplished in 90 to 120 days after the cease-fire, but those close to the rebels say this may be impossible.

To some in the army--and even some foreign military experts--the FMLN is seeking a cease-fire without having to demobilize, and the talk of the need for a long delay in disarming is part of this scheme.

“The guerrillas want a cease-fire without being tied to anything,” said one expert. “That would give them time to recruit, rearm and supply and strengthen themselves,” one expert said.