Appointment in La Palma

By George Russell

With a bold offer, Duarte reaches out to El Salvador's rebels

The stratagem was risky, audacious--and brilliant in its simplicity. In a few sentences uttered before the United Nations General Assembly in New York City last week, Salvadoran President Jose Napoleon Duarte pierced the psychological curtain that has divided his nation through nearly five years of civil war. During a 55-min. address, the stocky, dynamic Christian Democrat announced that he would travel unarmed to meet with his Marxist-Leninist foes, the guerrilla commanders of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.). At the meeting, he said, he would discuss the incorporation of the insurgents "into the process of democracy, and the preparation in an atmosphere of freedom for the next popular election."

Duarte set a time and a place for the encounter: Monday, Oct. 15 at 10 a.m., in the town of La Palma (pop. 3,000), 50 miles from San Salvador, the capital. His choice of the site was also courageous: the area around La Palma has long been a guerrilla hotbed. Indeed, in the days following Duarte's proposal, young guerrillas armed with M-16 rifles and hand grenades openly strolled the village streets.

Nonetheless, Duarte intended to drive up the rutted highway to La Palma, accompanied at most by a small contingent of aides, in his cocoa brown Jeep Cherokee. Even though his meeting might end in complete deadlock, El Salvador's first freely elected civilian President in 50 years was confident, as he told the U.N., that he could present the guerrillas with a "new reality." Said Duarte: "The Salvadoran people now have no doubt that subversive violence has lost its mystique and reason for existence." He backed his assertion with the offer of an amnesty if the guerrillas agreed to lay down their arms and join the democratic process.

Duarte's move was hailed by Bishop Marco Rene Revalo Contreras, president of the Salvadoran Episcopal Conference, as "a decisive moment that could permit a suspension of the bloodbath in our country." Said Mark Falcoff, a resident fellow at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research: "Duarte is showing a kind of brilliance and political imagination that U.S. Presidents sometimes lack."

Duarte's proposal does not alter his oft-stated insistence that the guerrillas would not be allowed to shoot their way into power. Instead, he said, they would have a chance to compete in nationwide municipal and legislative elections scheduled for March 1985. Nor did the President mention the reorganization of the 41,000-member Salvadoran army that the insurgents have long demanded. By calling for a face-to-face meeting with the guerrilla comandantes rather than with their civilian spokesmen (see chart), Duarte was showing that he truly wanted to get to the heart of the insurgency.

His offer caught the F.M.L.N. commanders by surprise. They hesitated until the next day before accepting the invitation, which they did on the condition that all guerrilla and government forces be evacuated from a zone six miles around La Palma. Duarte agreed. At week's end the guerrillas had not yet named their representatives to the meeting and were complaining about a lack of specific security and logistical preparation. In Panama, Guerrilla Spokesman Ruben Zamora tried to broaden the agenda for the talks by declaring that the aim should be "dialogue, peace, democracy and social justice." Duarte stuck to his declared intentions. Nonetheless, he accepted a guerrilla request that a senior Salvadoran army officer be present at La Palma; General Carlos Eugenic Vides Casanova, the Defense Minister, will accompany Duarte, as will Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas. The President rejected the rebel suggestion that foreign intermediaries be used in arranging the final details of the meeting. Radio stations broadcast invitations to Duarte's civilian supporters to show up at the talks and cheer on the presidential effort.

The Reagan Administration was almost as surprised by Duarte's maneuver as were the guerrillas, but soon made its feelings known. As Secretary of State George Shultz began a three-day tour of Latin America, he called the move a "bold and strong and imaginative stroke." Later that day, after a three-hour meeting with Duarte at the presidential palace in San Salvador, Shultz emphasized the Administration's "strong support" for the "move toward peace." President Reagan hailed the Salvadoran leader's offer as "an act of statesmanship." Then he wished that the revolutionary Sandinista government of neighboring Nicaragua would show the same willingness to negotiate with the U.S.-backed contra rebels who are fighting a guerrilla war along Nicaragua's borders.

That comparison was unavoidable, and indeed, Duarte's action foreshadowed another twist in the Central American diplomatic kaleidoscope. At the U.N., Honduran Foreign Minister Edgardo Paz Barnica offered a surprise proposal of his own, this one aimed at breaking the diplomatic logjam that has developed over the draft of a five-nation peace treaty for the region, the so-called Contadora Act. Paz Barnica invited representatives of the four other principals in the treaty negotiations (Costa Rica, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala) to meet in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa, or any other mutually acceptable place, this Friday. There, he said, they could work out details of the draft treaty, which calls for arms reductions, a nonaggression agreement and a commitment to democracy. Costa Rica, El Salvador and Guatemala quickly accepted the Honduran proposal. At week's end Nicaragua's Sandinista government was still weighing its response.

The Honduran proposal, speedily endorsed by the U.S., ran counter to a sustained Nicaraguan drive to have the Contadora draft treaty accepted without further alterations. Later, Paz Barnica and Costa Rican Foreign Minister Carlos Jose Gutierrez supported Washington's view that the draft treaty is unacceptably vague. As currently written, the document calls for an end to the region's arms race, control and reduction of current arsenals and the eventual elimination of foreign military advisers. U.S. diplomats fear it would require Washington to halt military aid to El Salvador immediately but would do little to ensure that Nicaragua would reduce its Cuban-and Soviet-supplied military stockpiles. Said Paz Barnica: "What we care about is not that the countries sign a document but that they comply with it."

However important the Contadora byplay, it was far overshadowed by the political drama in El Salvador. Duarte's offer to visit La Palma had developed in fits and starts. During his election campaign last March, he promised to seek a negotiated end to the violence that has claimed 50,000 Salvadoran lives in five years. Once in office he seemed to back away from that posture, but behind the scenes the President began sounding out key military commanders on the idea of face-to-face talks.

After Duarte made sure the military was behind him, his first notion was to hold discussions with the guerrillas in the U.S. His office announced a tentatively scheduled debate in Los Angeles between Salvadoran Minister of the Presidency Julio Rey Prendes and Guillermo Ungo, the non-Marxist president of the F.M.L.N.'s political arm, the Democratic Revolutionary Front. The idea was for the two men to hold private talks either before or after the televised face-off. The debate was scheduled for Oct. 12, then delayed for a month. Two weeks ago, Duarte decided to fill in for Foreign Minister Jorge Eduardo Tenorio as his country's chief representative at the U.N. General Assembly's opening session. Most of the President's inner circle of advisers were taken aback by the idea. Trusting his instincts, Duarte nonetheless prevailed.

Meanwhile, the Salvadoran government had engaged in a number of prisoner exchanges with the rebels. The two sides last month carried out the most complex trade of the war. The government allowed 60 captured F.M.L.N. fighters to go to Mexico, in return for 16 Salvadoran army officers who were being held by the guerrillas.

In the final hours before his departure for the U.S. on Oct. 6, Duarte briefed key officials in his government and in the political opposition about his intentions. Working in his home in a prosperous suburb of San Salvador, Duarte finished polishing his U.N. speech at 3 a.m. on the day before its delivery. Then, as he related last week, "I called the Minister of Defense at 7 a.m. to come to my house so he could read it. We informed all the sectors of the military, all the political parties and the members of the Cabinet."

One important payoff for Duarte's meticulous groundwork was the reaction of rightist politicians and conservative businessmen in San Salvador. Declared the powerful National Association of Private Enterprise, a group that had long opposed Duarte's left-of-center economic policies: "If the Salvadoran terrorists lay down their arms and work in peace toward their objectives, they are welcome to work shoulder-to-shoulder in the country's electoral process."

What little harsh reaction there was came mostly from Roberto d'Aubuisson, head of the ultrarightist Nationalist Republican Alliance and Duarte's bitter opponent in the March presidential elections. D'Aubuisson denounced the gesture as "a political show, a farce." He later adopted a more conciliatory posture after his vice-presidential running mate, Hugo Barrera, endorsed Duarte's notion of talks with the guerrillas and asked only that the President spell out "clear, definite and concrete means" toward a solution to the civil war. The right's quiet response was a sign of another Duarte triumph: during his four-month tenure, the President has managed to reassure most of his conservative critics of his essentially moderate views.

Another factor that undoubtedly tipped the domestic scales in favor of Duarte's offer has been the Salvadoran army's prosecution of the war. Schooled by U.S. military instructors in aggressive patrolling tactics and re-equipped with more than $130 million in U.S. aid approved by Congress after Duarte's election, the military appears to have taken the initiative from the F.M.L.N. So far, a much feared autumn offensive by the rebels has failed to materialize. Almost daily, Salvadoran newspapers carry reports of defections by the insurgents or of arms caches turned up during army sweeps in the countryside. Complains an F.M.L.N. official in Mexico City: "Many of our fighters have to go into combat barefoot." Guerrilla spokesmen also charge that government air and artillery attacks against rebel-held areas have eroded their civilian support, often at a heavy cost in human life. Nonetheless, U.S. and Salvadoran intelligence have monitored more than 100 reports of guerrilla movements since Duarte's U.N. speech, a possible indication that the F.M.L.N. was gearing up for action.

Privately, the guerrillas concede that the success of El Salvador's presidential balloting last March came as a heavy blow to them. As U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador Thomas Pickering puts it, "Since the presidential election, the guerrillas have really seen the political sand wash out from under them." Confidence in Duarte's political legitimacy, in short, provided the most important underpinning for his peace offer.

As the appointed hour for the historic meeting loomed, journalists began trickling into La Palma, which is known for its gaily painted craftware, and was once a sizable focus of tourism. The tourists have long since disappeared. Instead, local women selling fruits, fried bananas and pupusas (stuffed pancakes) share the streets with heavily armed men and women wearing combat fatigues. The mood among the guerrillas in La Palma ranged from wary enthusiasm to relief as they contemplated Duarte's arrival. "We feel great joy," said a dark-haired, 25-year-old known as Will, a veteran of the F.M.L.N. faction called the Popular Liberation Forces. Peace talks, he said, had been his organization's goal all along. A block away, a young man in a black beret twirled a yellow yo-yo over the rifle in his lap. Said he: "If the government is only trying to play a political game with us, then the war will have to continue."

Among La Palma's ordinary citizens, who have passively suffered the effects of strife for years, the feeling was more of resigned optimism. Mayor Guadalupe Sola, like Duarte a Christian Democrat, called it "an honor" that the town had been selected as the site for the talks. Said he: "It may not be the solution, but it is the first positive movement." The Rev. Rufino Bugitti, the town's Franciscan priest, scheduled a 5 p.m. Mass for the day before Duarte's scheduled arrival. For once, there seemed to be a chance that Salvadoran prayers for peace might be answered.

-By George Russell. Reported by Ricardo Chavira/San Salvador and J.T. Johnson/La Palma

With reporting by Ricardo Chavira, J.T. Johnson