El Salvador

San Salvador, El Salvador FOR 11 years, the rightists and the government of this poor, crowded country have waged one of the most brutish and bitter wars in modern history. At least 75,000 Salvadorans have died, often of ghoulish tortures.The United States entered the fray after 1979 with 55 military advisers and hundreds of millions of dollars, which made America the scorn of liberals who saw us as part of these tropical killing fields.So what is happening here is astonishing -- the long bloodletting is winding down to what will almost surely be a peace accord between the rightist government of President Alfredo Cristiani and the Marxists of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN)

WASHINGTON -- The Army's top officer has ordered a review to determine whether soldiers who served as advisers in El Salvador should be awarded the Combat Infantryman Badge, a prized medal they claim has been denied them because of politics.Gen. Dennis J. Reimer, the Army chief of staff, ordered a review by the U.S. Army Infantry Center at Fort Benning, Ga. In transmitting the order, the Army cited an Aug. 4 Sun article that detailed the stories of those who came under heavy fire and in some cases died helping the Salvadoran army fight Marxist insurgents.

The issue of immigration shook up the country and bedeviled Congress last year, but rarely do we examine the root causes of immigration. Consider El Salvador, which sends more people per capita to the United States than any other country. Up to a third of its population lives outside its borders, most in the United States, and its economy is supported by money those immigrants send back to their families. Even now, almost 15 years to the day after the end of the nation's civil war, people are fleeing for their lives - and their livelihoods - because the once-heralded peace accords have failed to bring peace.

In a service marked by sadness, anger and hope, the local religious community observed the first anniversary of the deaths of the six Jesuit priests who were slain a year ago today in El Salvador.Titled "Martyrs in a Martyred Land," last night's service was held in the chapel of Loyola College, a Jesuit-run school. About 100 people attended.The Greater Baltimore Interfaith Network on Central America organized the event. Comprising Christian and Jewish religious officials and lay people, the network was founded shortly after the Jesuits' assassinations.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- A confidential list o Salvadoran officers to be purged from their military posts next month for reasons including human rights violations includes the defense minister, his deputy minister and more than 110 officers, according to people familiar with the list.The purge orders, seen as one of the most serious tests of civilian authority over the armed forces, have raised tensions to a new level here as a series of important deadlines, established in the peace accord reached last year, slip by."

UNITED NATIONS -- A United Nations-sponsored investigation into the most notorious violence of El Salvador's civil war has found active and retired military officers responsible for the killings of thousands of civilians, including the archbishop of San Salvador, people who have seen the report said yesterday night.They said the report names the Salvadoran defense minister, Gen. Rene Emilio Ponce, who offered his resignation Friday, as one of a group of senior officers who ordered the killing of six Jesuit priests in 1989.

WASHINGTON -- The Reagan administration knew more tha it publicly disclosed about some of the worst human rights abuses in El Salvador's civil war and withheld the information from Congress, declassified cables and interviews with former government officials indicate.Charges that the Reagan administration, and to a lesser extent the Carter and Bush administrations, may have covered up evidence of abuses to win congressional approval of about $6 billion in aid were revived with the release last week of a United Nations-sponsored report documenting widespread human rights violations by the Salvadoran military.

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- The settlement ending the 12-year civil war in El Salvador is more than an agreement to stop fighting in a country where 75,000 have been killed. It is a pact to create profound changes in Salvadoran society that, on paper at least, will shift the conflict from an armed struggle to a political struggle."We are constructing the basement of a democracy," Juan Jose Martel, a member of the National Assembly, said of the peace process.A significant phase of that process ended late Tuesday night when United Nations Secretary-General Javier Perez de Cuellar -- in the last hours before his 10-year tenure ended at midnight -- achieved accord between the two sides on details of the pact.

CHALATENANGO, El Salvador -- Once he was an outlaw; now he's the law. Former guerrilla Carlos Lopez is still in the mountains, but today he heads the forces of the newly established National Civilian Police in the northern department of Chalatenango.His right-hand man is assistant commissioner Jose Luis Tobar Prieto, former member of the National Police, a force closely allied with the Salvadoran armed forces."If we'd known each other during the war, we would have been shooting each other," jokes Mr. Tobar.