World Will Back Salvador Peace Pact, U.S. Says : Central America: But Secretary of State Baker warns both sides against continued violence.

The Bush Administration assured El Salvador on Friday that it will receive broad international political and economic support to help carry out its new peace accord, but he warned both sides that they must firmly reject violence if the effort is to work.

In a speech before the country’s National Assembly, Secretary of State James A. Baker III said the United States and other democratic governments would send observers to help monitor the new peace process and would provide the aid needed to rebuild El Salvador’s war-torn economy.

But he also warned bluntly that the rash of death threats and bombings that have plagued the country in recent days--this time by right-wing extremists--must be halted and aggressively prosecuted if the reconciliation process is to succeed and if international support is to continue.

“There can and must be no space or tolerance in El Salvador for vigilantes of violence on the right or the left,” Baker said in a speech that drew a standing ovation from the delegates. He called those perpetrating the violence “traitors to the Salvadoran nation.”

Baker’s blunt warning, which came only a day after the formal signing of the peace accords in Mexico City, was designed to prod leaders of both the right and left wings into ending the current violence before it gets out of hand.

In the last several weeks, there have been two reported bombings, and death threats have been mounted against church leaders, journalists and United Nations personnel. Although right-wing extremists are suspected, no arrests have been made.

Baker’s assurances that the international community would continue to monitor the reconciliation process had been openly sought by leaders of both sides, the government of President Alfredo Cristiani and those allied with the guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.

The FMLN in particular had been counting on international supervision--both by the United Nations and by democratic nations--to help ensure that the provisions of the peace accords are carried out. The accords provide for 1,000 U.N. observers to help police the agreements.

The Administration has been trying to assemble an international aid package for El Salvador with contributions from the United States, Japan and the European Community--as well as Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Spain, which also were active in helping to arrange the peace accord.

U.S. officials said Baker sounded out the four Spanish-speaking countries at the meeting in Mexico City but has not yet received specific commitments. “This was not intended as a pledging session,” one official told reporters here.

State Department officials estimate that El Salvador will need about $1.8 billion in aid over the next five years to rebuild its infrastructure and get its economy back on track. The country already has begun moving toward a market-oriented economy.

The Administration itself has not promised any increased aid to El Salvador but has indicated that it will maintain current aid levels of $230 million and may rechannel some of the $85 million in military aid for general use if the peace accord proves to be working well.

Besides his visit to El Salvador, Baker spent half the day Friday in Nicaragua conferring with President Violeta Barrios de Chamorro and other top political leaders there before returning to Washington late Friday night.

Baker said after the Nicaragua sessions that the leaders had discussed two current problems--how to rid the country of live land mines left over from the days of guerrilla warfare and how to remold the Sandinista-dominated police force into a professional unit.

Although the United States offered no new proposals, Baker said an international group meeting in Ottawa this week had discussed some new measures for speeding up the mine-removal process in Nicaragua. But he gave no details.

He also said the Administration will ask Congress next month for a substantial amount of foreign aid for Nicaragua for fiscal 1993, which begins next Oct. 1. The United States gave Nicaragua $540 million in fiscal 1992.

As he has often done in recent days, Baker expressed hope Friday that the peace process in Nicaragua and the new accords in El Salvador would provide a spur to similar peace negotiations now going on in Guatemala, which currently are bogged down. He called the Guatemalan insurgency the last of its kind in the region.

“The time has come to negotiate an end to Guatemala’s 30-year-old insurgency,” Baker declared. He outlined the prospect of a new peace in the region that would enable Central American countries to turn to “development, trade and investment--work that has been neglected too long.”

During his address in El Salvador, Baker sought to be conspicuously evenhanded, both in his praise for the team that negotiated the peace accords and in his warnings that both the government and the former rebels must take action to quell violence in the country.

Urging the FMLN to denounce terrorism, as well, Baker noted that the ability of the former guerrillas to secure international help “will depend on the FMLN’s own track record in meeting its obligations too.” He called on the group to “demonstrate by its actions” that it is serious about peace.

Besides the political leaders in Nicaragua, Baker also met with Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, the Nicaraguan prelate who was instrumental in helping to defeat the Sandinistas politically. But he turned down a request from former Sandinista President Daniel Ortega for a similar session.

U.S. officials noted pointedly that Ortega had made the request only two days before Baker’s visit and had only recently visited Libya, which they suggested shows that the Sandinista leader is still allied with terrorist and anti-U.S. factions.