El Salvador Peace Talks

Jan 5 1992
^AM-UN-Salvador
^Salvadoran Government Fails to Arrive at Talks Date
^By ANDREW SELSKY
^Associated Press Writer
   UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ Negotiators for Salvadoran guerrillas scolded the government Sunday for failing to show up for a scheduled meeting on their U.N.-brokered peace accord.
   Under the peace agreement signed on New Year's Eve, the rebel and government sides in El Salvador's civil war were to have met Sunday to negotiate a timetable for demobilizing the guerrilla army of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, known as the FMLN.
   Four FMLN negotiators appeared at U.N. headquarters at dusk Sunday and headed for a negotiating room, where Alvaro de Soto, the U.N. mediator, was waiting for them. But the government delegation did not show up.
   "The government owes an explanation to the nation and to the international community as to why they were not here ready to begin this meeting today," said Roberto Canas, the FMLN spokesman.
   Mauricio Sandoval, the government spokesman in San Salvador, said negotiators were arriving Sunday night in New York for talks Monday. He gave no explanation for their delay.
   El Salvador's 12-year civil war has claimed more than 75,000 lives. Other issues remaining to be resolved include land reform, reducing the size of the Salvadoran army, and incorporating rebel fighters into a new civilian police force to replace the current militarized police force that has committed many human rights abuses.
   The Dec. 31 agreement sets a deadline of Friday for the U.S.-backed government of Alfredo Cristiani and the rebels to negotiate a timetable for implementation.
   It the talks do not produce "positive results" by Friday, both sides must submit to binding arbitration by the new U.N. secretary-general, Butros Ghali. Any unresolved matters are to be presented to Ghali on Jan. 14.
   The final peace pact is to be signed in Mexico City on Jan. 16.
   The peace pact - the fruit of 21 months of U.N.-mediated negotiations led by former Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar and de Soto, his Peruvian compatriot - provides for a definitive cessation of hostilities Feb. 1.
   Joaquin Villalobos, the leader-among-equals of the five-member general command of the FMLN, arrived from New York in Managua on Sunday to meet with Sandinista leaders, and said the peace process was "irreversible."
   "We are now before the harvest of all these years of fighting, and we hope that peace and stability in El Salvador will also be carried over to Nicaragua," Villalobos said.
   Nicaragua is technically at peace but skirmishes and tension continue among the conservative Nicaraguan government, the leftist Sandinista movement it ousted in 1990 elections, and former Contra fighers.
   In San Salvador, Archbishop Arturo Rivera y Damas said in his Sunday homily that a Catholic priest, Jose Ignacio Meza, had disappeared and was presumed kidnapped Friday in an area east of the capital. No other details were immediately available.
   Priests frequently have been targeted by right-wing troops or paramilitary forces in El Salvador.
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