From: nyt%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (NY Transfer News)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: Salvador:President Who Signed Accords
Date: 18 Dec 92 20:25:43 GMT
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Organization: The NY Transfer News Service
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Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit

From el diario/La Prensa 12/15/92

Translated and edited by Toby Mailman. "el diario/La Prensa" is
a Spanish language newspaper published in New York City.


  Alfredo Cristiani, a President Who Signed the Peace Agreement

                 (Second of a three-part series)

No one doubts that Alfredo Cristiani was the president who signed
the peace agreement in El Salvador, but some sectors question
whether he did it out of democratic conviction or because he was
pressured by an overwhelming domestic reality and a demanding
international community.

Cristiani, 45 years old, was not an "old political animal" but a
business administrator who, to serve his country, temporarily left
his coffee farms and pharmaceutical companies to devote himself to
politics and became president in June of 1989.

He became one of the principal actors in a process which put an
end to the cruel 12-year civil war, whose final stage will end on
Tuesday [Dec. 15, the peace agreement deadline for officially
ending the war], marking the beginning of a new cycle of peace and
democracy in El Salvador.

Doubts arose out of the Republican Nationalist Alliance (ARENA),
Cristiani's own party, as to whether he could lead the country,
immersed in armed conflict, and negotiate with the Marxist
guerrillas who for a decade had been struggling to remove
succesive governments. "But as time passed we really saw the
president's skill in managing the public situation without being a
professional politician...basically, he has something that can't
be learned: intuition," said Sigifredo Ochoa, an ARENA deputy.

[Cristiani] demonstrated negotiating skill with the Farabundo
Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) and signed the peace
agreements which, according to the opposition, could not be
fulfilled as originally agreed because he [Cristiani] did not do
it out of conviction but was forced to by a reality which demanded
an end to the war.

Determining factors in that reality were a poor people, tired of
the war, and the fall of the regimes of Eastern Europe which
changed the military and political strategy of the US, which
financed the Salvadoran conflict for years to avoid the expansion
of "international communism."

"For Cristiani peace is nothing more than a concession which he
was more or less conscious he had to make to avoid the
continuation of the war which he was convinced had to end," said
Ruben Zamora, left-wing leader and vice president of the Congress.

According to Zamora, the president could not hold on to the
"statesman-like stature" he had acquired during the negotiations, "not
because of what he is doing but because of a lack of vision; the image
doesn't fit him." However, being of a cold nature, and difficult to
rattle, he bore the pressure of groups which opposed an agreement with
the insurgents.

According to Iqbal Riza, head of the UN Observer Mission in El
Salvador, the president played a key role in the entire process,
"making difficult decisions, even dangerous ones" during the
negotiations and the implementation of the agreements.

"You've got to give him credit for having been able to open
broader formulas without damaging his interests," said Leonel
Gonzalez, member of the FMLN General Command, who added that the
very dynamic of the peace process broadened the vision of all
those involved.

Gerardo Le Chevallier, Christian Democrat leader, said Cristiani
"has played a historic role, although I think he never had the
intention of concluding the peace process in the way it ended...I
recognize the courage to have done so, but I understand that it
was more the result of the pressure of reality."

To his party colleagues Cristiani is the peace president, the
serene and quiet man who knew how to shoulder all the difficulties
to achieve peace for all Salvadorans.

To his detractors he is simply the president who happened,
indirectly, to be the one to sign the peace, being the
representative of the ruling ARENA party, whose membership
consists of the economic sectors which hold the real power in the
country. (edlp 12/15/92 from AP)


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