Pressure for talks on Salvador

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UNCONDITIONAL talks with the military junta and extreme right wing government officials were offered last month by leaders of the political opposition in El Salvador, the Revolutionary Democratic Front (FDR).

They were angrily brushed aside by Roberto D' Aubuisson, the chairman of the country's newly elected constituent assembly, and dismissed also by President Magana. The regime's American sponsors in Washington also brusquely dismissed the call for talks.

The response however has incurred the displeasure of the governments and political leaders who have seen collaboration with the FDR leadership and a negotiated settlement as the best means to contain the revolutionary struggles under way in El Salvador and restore stability to Central America as a whole.

Prime mover in this has been the Mexican government - under President Lopez Portillo. Significantly the FDR appeal for talks was made in Mexico City.

Pressure

But pressure upon the USA to seek a negotiated settlement to the war has also come from the French Mitterrand government and from other social democratic leaderships.

Though the West German government of Helmut Schmidt, which had taken up this position, has now fallen, Schmidt's place in the lobby has now been filled by the newly elected Spanish prime minister, Felipe Gonzalez.

And it has been announced that the social democratic governments of Sweden and Greece will join the ranks of those attempting to persuade Reagan to reconsider, and to bring his puppet regime in Salvador into line.

Urgency has been added to these efforts by the recent evidence of growing strength in the guerilla struggle in El Salvador itself. Reports last week indicated the impending capture by guerillas of the key garrison of Suchitoto, a mere 30 miles from the capital city, San Salvador.

It is the prospect of a military collapse of the Salvadoran junta, and the stimulus this would give to the revolutionary struggles and demands of the working class and peasants in Salvador, which appals the social democrats.

They do not believe that Reagan's strategy of escalating military and economic support to the junta can hold the line - and that if the guerillas cannot be P9PI LANEC THE Nicaraguan regime has added its own detailed revelations to the accumulation of evidence on the beaten by the Salvadoran state, the best way out is to strike a deal with the more pliabie leaders of the FDR.

For the guerillas waging the war which alone gives the FDR any credibility internationally, there is an acute lack of any leadership committed to carrying the civil war through to the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism.

This political weakness must be confronted both in El Salvador itself and in the campaigns in solidarity with the liberation CIA plots to destabilise the country.

Last week (as reported in SO) Newsweek magazine lifted the lid on the scale of US operations in assembling a counter-revolutionary strike force operating from bases in neighbouring Honduras.

It detailed the list of forces - including former National Guardsmen of deposed Nicaraguan dietator Somoza - enlisted by the CIA for cross-border raids into Nicaragua aimed at economically and militarily harassing the ruling FACED with a choice between the Republican Tweedledee Party and the Democrat Tweediedums, American voters last week handed out what amounted to a gesture of no-confidence in both.

The outcome was that JOBA SERNICE I OFOHIO but

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IT'S JUST A Wire WAR....