Compromise or lose:

...Although El Salvador has the most highly trained, best equipped military force in the region, morale is low and confidence eroding...

...The guerrillas blow up bridges and burn warehouses while the wealthy export into their foreign bank accounts every dollar of hard currency they can lay their hands on...

...This may turn out to be a long and frustrating wrangle...

...ARENA won the election because President Jose Napoleon Duarte and his ruling centrist Christian Democratic party simply collapsed under the conflicting pressures of attempting to govern a country torn apart by war...

...The one indisputable result of the more than $4 billion of overt and covert assistance we have thrown at the Salvadoran conflict has been the emergence of the most capable, resilient, and resourceful guerrilla movement the Western hemisphere has ever seen...

...The party had as its broad base of support, the professional class, small businessmen, landholding peasants, and the working poor...

...ROBERT E. WHITE...

...The ARENA campaign chant tells the story: "Cristiani to the presidency, D'Aubuisson to power...

...An experienced, bold, and instinctive politician, President Duarte was the one leader in the country with the skill and credentials to bridge the gap between the center and the left...

...In an attempt to justify death squads during the early days of the civil war, D'Aubuisson told European reporters, "You Germans were very intelligent...

...With these two political movements disabled the revolutionaries would become the strongest organized political force in the country...

...Last month, Alfredo Cristiani took the oath as president of El Salvador...

...The near-total breakdown of the centrist, ruling Christian Democratic party has dealt another shock to a policy that already lacked both coherence and direction...

...In April, a group of concerned American citizens held conversations in Mexico City with the Political-Diplomatic Commission of the revolutionary movement...

...Yet a United States-backed compromise offers the only hope for El Salvador to find a framework for political peace and economic development...

...The commission put in writing its readiness to negotiate a political solution to the conflict and its commitment "to the establishment of a pluralistic and democratic system in both the political and economic spheres...

...Ex-Major RobertoD'Au-buisson founded ARENA in the image of fascism...

...High ranking officers admit privately that the war is unwinnable...

...The collapse of the center has had the unlooked-for effect of driving the extremist movements toward moderation...

...In concert with Congress and the democratic leaders of Latin America, the new administration has moved to work out political solutions to the crises in Nicaragua and Panama...

...Cristiani, however, may find little tolerance inside his own party formoderation and conciliation...

...Duarte was elected in 1984 on a platform calling for dialogue and reconciliation with the revolutionary forces...

...In the eyes of the Salvadoran voters, Duarte had abandoned nationalist imperatives and had adopted a policy of genuflection toward the United States...

...The commitment of both President Cristiani and the revolutionaries to a political solution remains to be tested...

...Unless the Bush administration turns away from the Reagan emphasis on military victory, the failure of the centrist Christian Democrats will be followed by the progressive weakening of the right-wing ARENA party, leaving the military of El Salvador bereft of any plausible political partner...

...Yet it will prove far more frustrating and expensive to continue to prop up a government that lacks the base to exercise effective power...

...United States policy toward Central America had moved into the advanced stages of decomposition by the time President George Bush entered the White House this last January...

...Shultz's main points hit at the guerrillas' refusal "to test their support at the polls" and their insistence "on power-sharing in a transitional government formed outside the electoral process...

...The refusal of the Reagan administration to back realistic negotiations turned Duarte from a president with an overwhelming mandate to end the war, into a hapless figure whose chief role was to lobby Congress for ever-increasing military assistance...

...The Bush administration should waste no time in encouraging the parties to move to the negotiating table...

...Both the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) and the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (the FMLN), now profess to believe in negotiation as the preferred means to end the decade-old civil war...

...In a recent speech, Secretary of State James Baker stated his support for dialogue "between the government of El Salvador and the Marxist guerrillas to end the conflict...

...The sick minds that seek a final solution through military massacres and death squads still wield great power...

...Yet the news is not all bad...

...In what appeared to be a direct response to United States concerns, the revolutionaries offered to participate in the electoral process and to abide by the outcome in exchange for a six-month postponement of the election...

...In the end, any settlement will require a willingness on the part of the to accept an outcome that reflects, to some degree, the balance of forces that exists...

...Blessed are the distant for they shall gain perspective...

...They also gave up any request for power-sharing as described by Shultz...

...Cristiani won the election under the banner of ARENA, an extreme right-wing party which represents the interests of the industrialists and large landowners...

...If there is a leftover cue card in the oval office desk, President Bush might do well to jot down this fundamental fact: Any Salvadoran leader who tries to impose a military solution on the country will weaken not only his party, but the forces that party represents...

...It is in El Salvador, however, that the Bush administration's commitment to negotiation and compromise will meet its toughest test...

...Even the hawkish ex-Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams has expressed qualified approval...

...The revolutionaries and the rich collaborate in the destruction of the economic base of the country...

...Such an arrangement will not satisfy those Americans of either the right or the left who seek military victory over the forces of evil...

...The revolutionaries have not only survived the high-tech war directed by the U.S., they have extended their military power and political cadres into every province of the country...

...you realized the Jews were responsible for the spread of communism and you began to kill them...

...Time works against the government...

...The Bush administration was impressed enough with the proposals to declare them "serious and worthy of substantive consideration...

...Yet, in his visit to this country, Cristiani came across as a decent, responsible leader committed to human rights and to a peaceful solution to the conflict...

...Just before leaving office, Secretary of State George Shultz set out the reasons why he believed the U. S. must continue to assist the government of El Salvador in its struggle...