Rebels’ Weapons Stash Jeopardizes Peace Process : El Salvador: Former guerrillas hid tons of weapons in Nicaragua, devastating their credibility.

With great fanfare and even a few tears, El Salvador’s leftist guerrillas six months ago turned in their weapons and formed a legal political party as part of landmark peace accords that ended this country’s savage civil war.

Now the former guerrillas stand accused of having deliberately lied when they said they were disarming. A string of explosions beneath an auto repair shop in neighboring Nicaragua on May 23 revealed a hidden stockpile of rebel weaponry, including antiaircraft missiles and tons of munitions.

The discovery has devastated the former rebels’ credibility, invited censure from friends and foes alike and threatens to undermine the entire peace process. It comes just as the former insurgents sought to enter the world of traditional politics.

“This puts a black stain on a white dress--no matter how much you wash it, the stain does not go away so easily,” said Ana Guadalupe Martinez, a leader of the former rebel Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN).

Leaders of the FMLN faction responsible for most of the discovered weapons say they maintained the arsenals because of lingering fear of the Salvadoran army and as a “bargaining chip” to force the government to fulfill the peace treaty, which includes reforms of the military and judiciary.

The former rebels last December assured U.N. peacekeepers that they had relinquished all of their guns, mortars and explosives. It was the single major commitment the rebels agreed to in the U.N.-brokered peace agreement signed in January, 1992, and ratified Dec. 15, marking the war’s formal end.

The discovery that the rebels in fact had hoarded weapons led to an unusually harsh condemnation from the U.N. Security Council, which labeled the clandestine caches the “most grave violation to date of the peace accords.”

“This deliberate effort to deceive me puts in doubt my credibility and raises for me very serious questions of trust,” an angry U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali wrote to the Farabundo Marti Front.

The Salvadoran government, which until now has been the main target of criticism for failure to comply with the peace accords, launched a campaign to have the FMLN disqualified as a party and barred from politics. According to U.S. congressional sources, the FMLN deception could also jeopardize American aid to El Salvador, which is contingent on compliance--by the government and the former rebels--with all elements of the peace settlement.

“They need to come clean with everything,” said a Capitol Hill source who follows El Salvador and has in the past been friendly to the rebels. “This cannot happen again. . . . It is going to be very tough up here to justify sending economic aid down there if it looks like people are not complying.”

Ultimately, more serious consequences could emerge for the former rebels: Discovered along with the hidden arsenal were 310 blank and fake passports from 22 countries, along with documents that revealed an intricate kidnaping ring apparently run by leftist groups. The kidnapers reportedly targeted prominent Latin American business executives, with the goal of using the ransoms to finance guerrilla operations. The FMLN is denying any connection to the kidnaping ring and has urged a full investigation.

The secret depots were discovered after the middle-of-the-night blasts in May under the automotive shop outside Managua, the Nicaraguan capital. Two people were killed and more than a dozen houses damaged.

In all, five underground warehouses were found. Weapons included 19 Soviet-made SAM-7 and SAM-14 missiles, more than 2,000 assault rifles and hundreds of grenades, mortars, mines and ammunition rounds.

The Nicaraguan army, still controlled by the leftist Sandinista Front despite its 1990 electoral loss, was eager to distance itself from the arsenal. Army chief Gen. Humberto Ortega immediately blamed one faction of the FMLN and accused it of acting “irresponsibly, illegally and immorally.”

Nicaragua’s Sandinistas, when they held power in the 1980s, were major suppliers of armaments to the Salvadoran rebels.

The faction that was accused, the Popular Liberation Forces, is the largest of five groups that make up the Farabundo Marti Front. Its leaders eventually admitted the guns were theirs but said none had been touched since November, 1991.

Rival factions within the FMLN joined the attack on the Popular Liberation Forces, accusing it of lying and damaging the political fortunes of the organization. Then it became clear that other factions also had weapons that had not been turned in. As the furor mounted, all factions pledged to find and hand over every remaining weapon.

The arsenal and the political fallout following its discovery have exposed the mistrust that continues to run deep on both sides of the civil war that gripped this country for 12 years.

The Salvadoran government and military quickly accused the Farabundo Marti Front of planning to rearm itself if it loses in next year’s elections. The Front denies any plan to mount a military offensive.

“This is a blow to the trustworthiness of the peace process,” President Alfredo Cristiani said. “Until now, there have been problems, there have been (delays), but I think in this case the FMLN has a lot to explain to the Salvadoran people in terms of their true intentions.”

Cristiani seized the FMLN crisis to deflect pressure from his own government, which has been criticized for lagging on several peace accord reforms, including the purge of human rights abusers from the army. Cristiani completed the purge last week after many delays.

Conceding that they will pay a high political cost, FMLN leaders blamed the decision to maintain an arsenal on the doubts that many former rebels have about their own security; about elections that have traditionally benefited the rich and powerful, and about an army that remains strong.

“The real reason we did not inventory or destroy all of our weapons (as the United Nations required) was simply because of the profound distrust we have of the armed forces,” Salvador Sanchez Ceren, head of the Popular Liberation Forces faction, said in a letter to Boutros-Ghali. “This obliged us to hide a last bargaining chip to guarantee the absolute fulfillment of all the accords.”

Sanchez Ceren added that his group had intended to give up the weapons but had not gotten around to it before the explosion. He accused the government and the right wing of exploiting the crisis for political gains and to weaken the left before presidential elections next March.

Indeed, one casualty so far appears to be Facundo Guardado, a leader of the Popular Liberation Forces who was planning to run for vice president on a leftist-coalition ticket. His candidacy is all but finished, sources in the faction say.

As the FMLN struggles now to salvage its credibility, it is also fighting government efforts to portray it as a force more comfortable with guns than with ballot boxes. “In no moment have we considered re-initiating the armed conflict,” FMLN coordinator Schafik Handal said. “We remain moored to the development and consolidation of this (democratic) process.”