Envoy says Salvador truce `can't be done' // UN official finds neither side budging

SAN SALVADOR Refusal by both sides to budge on the question ofguaranteeing rebel security after an end to El Salvador's 11-yearcivil war "closes the circle" on negotiations and means a cease-fire"can't be done," Alvaro de Soto, the United Nations mediator in thepeace talks, said Sunday.

Speaking in a telephone interview from his home in Connecticut,de Soto said the rebel Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front(known as FMLN) was seeking assurances that the government would notgive.

"Unless you look at guarantees and conditions, for the FMLN thecease-fire will be like asking them to jump into an empty swimmingpool," de Soto said. "For this reason, the FMLN is asking forcease-fire terms that are tantamount to an armed peace. They wantto be able to carry out maneuvers and continue to recruit in a largeswatch of the country to be ready for the possibility of having toreturn to fighting. For the government, that is unthinkable."

Although they have changed the wording and modified the form, aconstant FMLN demand over the 16 months of peace talks has been toreform the govern ment's armed forces to include elements of the rebel army, a demandflatly rejected by President Alfredo Cristiani.

FMLN officials nevertheless renewed that demand last week in ameeting with de Soto in Costa Rica, calling for a union of the twoarmies.

De Soto's assessment of the official Salvadoran view wasconfirmed by Cristiani, who said in a separate interview that the"Gordian knot" blocking a cease-fire is the FMLN demand that itssecurity be guaranteed by incorporating its guerrilla fighters intothe country's security forces.

"That is basically the main issue in generating obstacles rightnow," he said during a conversation in his office, calling it animpractical idea.

Cristiani appeared to believe that he has the upper hand indealing with the guerrillas, who he described as torn by dissension.

Arguing that the rebels have no right to ask for economic orpolitical reforms of an elected government, Cristiani indicated thatthere really is nothing to negotiate other than the laying down ofrebel arms.

"The main objective here is to create a disarmed political partyfrom the FMLN," he said, arguing that the FMLN had agreed "that thisnegotiation is not to promote your own political platform, but is tolook for democratization, respect for human rights andreconciliation."

"Everybody has to take risks," he said, and the FMLN will haveto take the risk of totally disarming if it wants peace. Heacknowledged that "nothing is 100 percent safe. . . . Nobody canguarantee them 100 percent and we have tried once, twice, a thousandtimes to tell them that. The less we get into attitudes that willcreate resentments in other people or sections the more guaranteethey will have that nothing will happen to them."

What will give the guerrillas security, the president said, "isthat they become a political party and that they work within thedemocratic way of life."

"They have to come in," Cristiani stressed. "They have to takethe risks. It's not easy. They have killed and destroyed. . . .There might be some lunatics out there who want to take things intotheir own hands. All we can do is to try to give them the samesecurity that we give any other citizen here."

Asked what risks the government is willing to take in light ofthe lack of absolute guarantees for the rebels' security, Cristiani'sanswer was none.

"Why should a government take risks? . . . We didn't shoot ourway in here. . . . We are here because we expressed to the peoplewhat we would do and they supported what we told them."

Denying a suggestion that after 11 years of war the FMLN has aright to ask for changes in the economic and political system, thepresident said that the guerrillas should think of the need for peacefor the country's 5 million citizens.

The last round of direct peace talks was in May. A scheduledmeeting earlier this month was canceled and no new discussions areset, although both the United States and the Soviet Union have urgedUN Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar to take a more directrole.

Perez de Cuellar has suggested that Washington and Moscow couldhelp more by pressuring the sides to compromise.

In the meantime, the war, which has taken an estimated 75,000lives, continues at an increasing pace, with battle deaths this monthaveraging six a day.