U.N. to Shift Peacekeepers to Salvador
The United Nations will abolish its current Central American peacekeeping unit and send its members soon to El Salvador, where a final peace agreement is nearly completed, diplomats said Friday.
Under a peace plan initialed in New York on New Year’s Eve, leftist guerrillas and the government will end 12 years of fighting with a cease-fire Feb. 1.
To get U.N. military observers there in time, the U.N. Observer Group in Central America, known as ONUCA, will be abolished within the next week or so and its 132 military observers plus support staff sent to El Salvador.
The diplomats said 70 or 80 more officers will be recruited for the initial cease-fire monitoring duty.
ONUCA, set up two years ago as the first peacekeeping operation in the Western Hemisphere, was designed to stop cross-border incursions.
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