Second Round

Peace talks in a lower key

When government and rebel representatives convened for peace talks in El Salvador's provincial town of La Palma six weeks ago, the mood was festive as thousands of expectant Salvadorans celebrated under the protection of smiling Boy Scouts. But the first meeting produced mainly promises to meet again, so when the two sides resumed their discussion last week in the village of Ayagualo, twelve miles from San Salvador, the atmosphere was tentative and tense. And when the two parties came down from their hilltop retreat after more than twelve hours of talks, they seemed no closer to peace than before. In a brief statement summarizing the day's progress, San Salvador Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas, one of two intermediaries, reported that the two sides had agreed on "a period of tranquillity on the nation's highways between Dec. 22 and Jan. 3." But Rivera y Damas said nothing of any larger agreements or a full Christmas truce and only made a general reference to holding future talks.

The distance between the two parties was underlined at the meeting's end as each summed up the discussions. "The road to peace isn't an easy one," said Julio Adolfo Rey Prendes, the government representative (President Jose Napoleon Duarte did not attend). Then, as the government side sped away, Ruben Zamora, the best-known member of the rebel delegation, climbed the steps to the microphones with three colleagues. Said Facundo Guardado, a senior guerrilla commander: "There is an oligarchical power that shares and applies the policies of the Reagan Administration, a power that is imposing itself against the will of the people."

Later, government representatives, joined by President Duarte, appeared on television to discuss the day's events. The rebels, they said, had called for a three-stage plan that involved reforming the constitution, holding new general elections and reorganizing the armed forces. Duarte rejected the proposal as unworkable under El Salvador's constitution.

Duarte did, however, make a small but significant gesture of reconciliation last week when he ordered Rodolfo Isidro Lopez Sibrian, an army officer accused of organizing the 1981 killings of two U.S. land-reform advisers, to be discharged from the army without pension. Duarte's move came only a week after the Salvadoran Supreme Court threw out the case against the former lieutenant. Nonetheless, the President charged that the rebel plan would not lessen the toll of war. Said he: "The rebels do not want to humanize the conflict because they say it is their strategy to prolong a war to destroy the country. They do not want a truce."