University Daily Kansan, April 1, 1985
NATION AND WORLD
Page 12
Changing tactics aim to end Salvadoran war
By United Press International
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — After nearly six years of inconclusive civil war, the players in El Salvador's bloody drama are changing tactics on the military and propaganda battlefields.
Like most things in El Salvador, the longterm changes are hard to predict.
But for the first time in years, both the leftist guerrillas of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and the Salvadoran military, financed by the United States, say they are doing things differently in the hope of ending the costly stalemate.
"There is a change in the type of war," Joaquin Villaibos, commander of the powerful People's Revolutionary Army and chief refuge military strategist, said in a rare interview broadcast last week over the clandestine Radio Venceremos.
"The CHANGE HAS come in the last months. There is a change in tactics, including in the form. We can say that we have entered a war of attrition focused on the army, the military, the economy, politics, (national) psychology and morale."
"What we have to overturn is the base. And the base is the will of the Americans to continue helping (the States government)." Viliol said.
Among the latest evidence of change in guerrilla tactics is an increase in urban terrorism after years of almost exclusive concentration on rural combat units.
VILLALOBOS SAID the return of urban guerrilla cells — estimated by U.S. officials at 500 combatants — is aimed at destabilizing the country's economic and political bases.
It has meant a jump in the number of political assassinations claimed by guerrillas and nearly routine rebel attacks on city halls, communications centers and electric power stations.
Four young marksmans last week gunned down Gen. Jose Alberto Medrano as he parked his car near an apartment complex in northern San Salvador. Medrano founded the precursor to the country's death squads.
squads. In claiming responsibility for the killing — the 12th suspected by
leftists in the past two months — guerrilla radio called Medrano a "butcher" and warned that "popular justice may be delayed, but it is never forgiven."
TWO WEEKS EARLIER, Ll. Col.
Ricardo Cienfuegos, chief army
spokesman, was shot at point blank
range as he rested between sets at a
private San Salvador tennis club. The
rebels' Clara Elizabeth Ramirez
Front took responsibility for the
murder.
Salvadoran and U.S. officials say the new terrorist tactics are a defensive reaction to trouble on the battlefield.
The Salvadoran army, officials say, has markedly improved its efficiency and forced the guerrillas to reduce their units from almost 100 to 20 combatants. Rebel leadership has reportedly suffered.
Moreover, the army now counts among its arsenal 40 U.S-made Huey transport helicopters and three Huey 500 gunships, capable of dropping an entire combat battalion into rebel areas and avoiding guerrilla ambushes on the way. The number of helicopters has doubled since last year.
In what officialies view as a tacit admission of recent setbacks, Vilalobos told rebel radio that the FMLN tactically beat the national army in 1983 and part of 1984.
In an effort to strengthen what it sees as the army momentum, the United States recently agreed to a Salvadoran request to divert $1 million in funds targeted for ammunition to civil action, such as medicine, food and clothing for civilians.
The program, which coincides with the establishment of civilian patrols in conflict-ridden areas, is similar to one in Guatemala that appears to be winning the hearts of the people for the government.
Officials said the program, still in its infancy, would include building schools, clinics and other service centers as soon as continued security could be provided.
What neither the army nor the rebels can predict, however, is when that will take place.
"In a war of attrition the army is going to lose," said Villaolob. "We are not in a hurry."
The colder weather forces art student John Kelley, Minel, N. D., freshman, to don gloves and a winter jacket. Kelley yesterday sketched details of the Anthropology Museum in the unseasonable chill.
Roy Stewart/KANSAN
Greece relents; Spain, Portugal to enter EEC
By United Press International
BRUSSELS, Belgium — Leaders of the 10-nation European Economic Community Saturday endorsed an economic aid plan to bring Spain and Portugal into the world's largest trade bloc by January 1.
Their two-day summit for a time had been threatened with failure because of Greek Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou's demand for special financial aid to cushion his country against competition from Spanish and Portuguese agricultural exports.
Papandreou's demands occupied most of the time at the summit until Greece finally settled for less than it originally sought and dropped its enlargement of the EEC, known informally as the common market.
"A cloud has been lifted," said
a Minister Minister Bretxai,
who presides over the council.
THE GOVERNMENT leaders approved a $2.87 billion, seven-year aid package to help Greece, Italy and France cope with the problems of Spanish and Portuguese entry. About half of it will go to Greece.
In addition, $1.75 billion in loans will be made available to the Mediterranean nations to adapt to the enlargement.
The aid fell short of the $4.6 billion originally sought by Papandreou, who left the meeting early to attend a session of the Greek President Christos Santzeltakis.
According to diplomatic sources,
West German Chancellor Helmut
Kohl accused Papandreou of wasting
the time of the summit in order to
divert attention from domestic
political problems.
BELGIAN PRIME Minister Wilfried Martens expressed disappointment that as a result of the time spent dealing with Papandreou's problem, the summit had not been able to dedicate adequate attention to what was to have been the chief item on the agenda / the need to find solutions to Europe's growing technological lag.
Martens said the summit "showed a lack of political will to tackle our economic problems as a community."
Still, despite the palpable sense of frustration at the end of the meeting, leaders expressed relief that the eight-year process to bring Spain and Portugal into the common market, creating a community of nearly 320 million people, was finally at an end.
"It is good for democracy and it extends democracy in a very troubled world," said British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
S. African police use tear gas at funeral
By United Press International
PORT ELIZABETH. South Africa — Police in armored trucks yesterday fired rubber bullets and tear gas into a crowd of about 35,000 blacks leaving a funeral for riot victims in Zwide, a black township about 10 miles from this coastal city.
One black man was killed by a shotgun blast, township sources said.
Police said they could not confirm the unofficial report.
For the first time in five months, the white-minority government announced it sent army troops into black townships in southern South Africa as police reported scattered violence around Port Elizabeth.
A HELICOPTER hovered overhead the funeral crowd and police repeatedly confronted the blacks who chanted, "Injury to one, injury to
But township sources said police also fired shotguns, killing one man and injuring 10. They said the man died after friends carried him to his home in Zwide.
The clash at Zwide was the latest in two weeks of racial violence that has killed at least 37 people. Police killed 19 blacks at nearby Uitenhage on March 21 when they fired into a crowd walking to a funeral.
A Defense Force spokesman confirmed in Pretoria that army troops "have been deployed in support of the South African Police" in the eastern Cape province around Port Elizabeth.
It was believed to be the first time soldiers have moved in since troops and police raided four black townships last Oct. 23 following rioting
over a new constitution that still excluded blacks from full political power.
AN ESTIMATED 35,000 people peacefully attended the joint funeral of the riot victims while heavily armed police kept their distance. But as the mourners began dancing and chanting threats to the life of black Mayor Tamsanqa Linda, police began firing tear gas.
As a helicopter hovered overhead, police repeatedly used tear gas and rubber bullets to break up the crowd, which chanted, "injury to one, injury to all," and, "Come, come and get us."
At least 27 people associated with black town councils have been killed this year, including a 4-year-old girl killed Saturday when black radicals burned down the house of her mother, a black town council worker.
Much of the violence in the past year has reflected black anger with moderate leaders who cooperate with the white-ruled government and its policy of apartheid, or racial separation.
Two other riot victims were buried Sunday at Kawanohab, outside Ultenhage, but police kept a low eye and the crowd remained peaceful.
In line with established policy, police and Defense Force officials declined to give details of the military role in the black townships.
But a police spokesman said soldiers were working in the black areas and not just at perimeter or not just at guard has often been the case in the past.
In Moscow, the Soviet Union denounced the South African government.