Amnesty Planned for Salvador War Crimes : Peace accords: Opposition fears that a sweeping order could free the killers of six Jesuit priests.

The Salvadoran legislature is expected today to decree a general amnesty to forgive all war crimes, a move that could lead to the release of army officers convicted of assassinating six Jesuit priests in 1989.

The ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance, called Arena, and its political opposition have been deadlocked in negotiations over the scope of the amnesty needed for the legal return of rebel leaders on Feb. 1, the beginning of a cease-fire in the 12-year civil war.

Arena leaders have argued that a sweeping amnesty is necessary for a national reconciliation following a war that claimed 75,000 lives.

“Now we should look to the future and, in that sense, we should be big and forgive,” Arena President Armando Calderon Sol said this week. “There should be a general amnesty, broad and sufficient. We cannot be going case by case or evaluating if this crime, if this death, is worth more than this other one.”

But the political opposition, including the guerrillas, has pushed for a limited amnesty that would not pardon the Jesuits’ murderers and that would allow a Truth Commission established by the peace accords to investigate other grave human rights abuses.

The Roman Catholic Church and international human rights groups also are seeking a limited amnesty. In a letter to President Alfredo Cristiani, the U.S.-based human-rights group Americas Watch argued: “An amnesty should not protect those on either side of the conflict who have committed war crimes or gross abuses of human rights, including summary execution, torture and forced disappearances.”

A peace commission made up of rebels and political party representatives has been meeting in Mexico City this week to try to hammer out a consensus proposal. They were expected to continue talks early this morning before those who are members of the legislature fly back to San Salvador to vote.

But Arena and its right-wing allies control the legislature. If the commission is unable to come up with a compromise amnesty law, Arena is expected to pass its own. By law, the legislature must issue a decree today, eight days before it is to take effect.

The peace commission was established by the accords to oversee their implementation beginning Feb. 1.

U.S. Rep. Joe Moakley (D-Mass.) issued a statement in Washington calling on the Bush Administration to oppose an amnesty that would cover the Jesuit case “or any other egregious crimes.” He said passage of such a law could “seriously undermine congressional support for reconstruction and development assistance” to El Salvador.

The six Jesuits, their maid and her daughter were murdered by government soldiers at the Central American University on Nov. 16, 1989, in the middle of a guerrilla offensive in San Salvador. Last September, a jury found Salvadoran army Col. Guillermo Alfredo Benavides guilty of ordering and organizing the killings. Lt. Yusshy Rene Mendoza was convicted of murdering the 15-year-old girl, while seven other defendants were acquitted.

Theirs was the first trial ever of Salvadoran officers in a human rights case. Despite the convictions, some observers suspected a deal had been cut and that the two eventually would be released. They have yet to be sentenced.

A U.S. Embassy spokeswoman said the State Department and the embassy have not taken a position on the breadth of amnesty.

The U.S. government is seeking prosecution of a Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front rebel who allegedly executed two U.S. airmen--Lt. Col. David H. Pickett and Pvt. Earnest G. Dawson--captured alive from their downed helicopter in January, 1991. “There is an indictment in the United States against the killer in the Dawson-Pickett case, which an amnesty would not affect,” a spokeswoman said.

In 1987, under a regional peace accord, then-President Jose Napoleon Duarte issued a blanket amnesty covering political and related common crimes, but he exempted the 1980 murder of the archbishop of San Salvador, Msgr. Oscar Arnulfo Romero, by a right-wing death squad.

Under that amnesty, a judge ordered the release of three rebels jailed for the 1985 murder of 13 people at an outdoor cafe, including four Marine guards at the U.S. Embassy and two other Americans. Under U.S. pressure, Duarte overruled the court, and the three were recently convicted by a military tribunal.

This time, the Christian Democrats and leftists in the Democratic Convergence are calling for an amnesty that would exempt massacres, death caused by torture, disappearances and executions of prisoners taken in combat.