Veto on Salvador

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SEEKING a way out of his halfyearly embarrassment at having to certify that there has been an improvement in 'human rights" under El Salvador's bloody dictatorship, Ronald Reagan has hit on a new solution.

He has vetoed the Bill stipulating that such improvements are a precondition of US economic and military aid. Secretary of State George Schultz has gone even further and said that there is no prospect of an improvement on the 'human rights" front in El Salvador.

The regime itself appears little concerned to whitewash its image for international consumption, even to please its US sponsors.

The President of the Constituent Assembly, notorious death squad leader Major Robert D'Aubuisson, ostentatiously boycotted a banquet laid Syrian President Assad Keagan with Bush on for a visit by American Vice-President George Bush.

Bush's condemnation of the death squads, and his warning that their continuing toll of murders could lose the regime the "support of the American people" fell on deaf ears, coming after a deliberately provocative wave of killings targeting union leaders sponsored by the American AFL-CIO, tion with the CIA.

It is estimated that the death squads have killed anything up to 40,000 civilians in the last four years of the liberation struggle. But even this level of terror has not been sufficient to crush the fighting spirit of the Salvadorean left wing guerrillas of the FMLN, which has continued to make gains against an army which - according to State Department analysts - is teetering on the brink of collapse:

Furthèr transfusions of cash and equipment are an obvious US response: FMLN leaders have warned of the imminent danger of US troops intervening.

But unless Reagan can find some way to gift wrap his grisly allies in San Salvador, he will have great difficulty embarking upon such an open ended military exercise in election year.