Salvadoran Guerrilla Leaders Return on Eve of Truce : Cease-fire: The nation’s armed forces celebrate the end of 12 years of bloody civil war.

Elated and tearful, El Salvador’s top guerrilla commanders returned to the country on the eve of a cease-fire Friday as the nation’s armed forces celebrated the end of 12 years of civil war.

The guerrilla leaders--including the five comandantes of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front--walked off a Mexican presidential plane into a crush of supporters bearing flowers and red rebel flags.

“Twenty years ago, I never believed we would see this day,” said Joaquin Villalobos, one of the founders of the Marxist-led guerrilla army.

“We are beginning a crucial stage in the history of this country,” said Schafik Handal, another commander and founder. “A new El Salvador, peaceful, democratic and with the bases of social justice, should emerge.”

The guerrillas were met by their own security guards, as well as by members of the diplomatic corps based here and observers from the United Nations, which will oversee the cease-fire that begins today. The United Nations brokered the peace agreement that the government and guerrillas signed in Mexico City on Jan. 16.

If the rebels seemed triumphant about their open and legal return, the army claimed victory in the war at their own ceremony earlier in the day.

President Alfredo Cristiani and members of the military high command marked the occasion with brass bands and the awarding of medals at the headquarters of the 1st Infantry Brigade in San Salvador.

“Countrymen, we are here proudly before you . . . to tell you that we have successfully fulfilled the mission of defending you from Communist aggression,” Defense Minister Rene Emilio Ponce said.

The army--once all-powerful in El Salvador--had been virtually silent since the signing of the peace accords.

Under the agreements, the armed forces will be cut in half to about 31,000 members and will be charged with protecting the nation’s sovereignty from external threats, rather than with internal security.

Three militarized police forces will be disbanded and a new civilian police force will be created.

Under the cease-fire, the army will be confined to barracks as never before in its history, and the U.N. will monitor their compliance. The guerrillas will move into restricted zones and give up their guns in stages over 10 months.

At the military ceremony, Cristiani lauded the army’s sacrifice during the war and Ponce embraced the peace accords, promising that the military would keep to its new, limited role.

“Democracy may have it’s defects, but there is no better system,” Ponce said.

Col. Julio Cesar Grijalva said that he felt “like a winner, because we have staunchly defended El Salvador.”

But many of the officials and troops looked somber and, privately, one rightist colonel admitted that the return of rebel commanders was “painful.”

Several soldiers at the celebration said that neither side had won the civil war and that they were relieved to see the end of it.

“Thank God,” said one sergeant who has spent eight years in the army. “We don’t have to go to the mountains to fight anymore.”