And Now, the Main Event

By George Russell

From the halls of the U.S. Congress to the mountainous reaches of El Salvador, the battle over the future of Central America became a war of scattered skirmishes last week. In Washington, partisan attacks flew back and forth, centering on the anti-Communist policies of the Reagan Administration. There also were harsh diplomatic exchanges between the nuclear superpowers, each accusing the other of complicity in the region's simmering conflicts, while both Soviet and American warships showed the flag in the Caribbean. In El Salvador, government soldiers and Marxist-led guerrillas played a deadly game of hide-and-seek at a crucial political juncture. In neighboring Honduras, controversy broke out anew over a U.S. military presence that the Reagan Administration describes as temporary but that is potentially a good deal more permanent.

All those signs of tension were sidelights to a long-awaited main event: El Salvador's March 25 presidential elections. After two months of acrimonious campaigning, the U.S.-backed process to choose that battered country's first freely elected President in 50 years drew to an end late last week. As up to 1.7 million voters prepared to trek to the polls, the seven-man race was still considered a toss-up between the controversial front runners, Jose Napoleon Duarte, 58, of the center-left Christian Democratic Party (P.D.C.), and Roberto d'Aubuisson, 40, leader of the ultrarightist Nationalist Republican Alliance, known as ARENA. There was a good chance that neither candidate would win the outright majority required for election, and that a runoff vote would be necessary within 30 days after Sunday's results were certified.

As the din of election propaganda faded, the rattle of gunfire in the background grew louder. Both the 30,000-member Salvadoran army and some 10,000 members of the Marxist-led Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (F.M.L.N.) launched election-eve offensives, each claiming that the tide of the four-year civil war was turning in its favor. Some 4,000 Salvadoran troops fanned out through the country's eastern departments, where the guerrillas are dominant, to harass the rebels and to protect the elections. For their part, the elusive guerrillas launched a countercampaign under such slogans as "No to the Electoral Farce; Yes to the People's War." Despite an F.M.L.N. promise to avoid disrupting the elections, roving guerrilla bands occupied remote towns and set up roadblocks along the country's central Pan American Highway, confiscating from passers-by the national identity cards needed to cast ballots. In the regional center of San Miguel, the rebels managed to destroy an aircraft carrying ballot boxes to local polling places. On Saturday, guerrillas ambushed and killed a contingent of 30 Salvadoran soldiers and national guardsmen 45 miles east of the capital of San Salvador.

For Washington, which spent $3.4 million to help organize the election and guarantee its fairness, the outcome of the balloting was less important, at least officially, than the fact that the election exercise was finally taking place. But on Capitol Hill, President Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz were taking less lofty positions as they fought another round in an uphill Senate battle to gain $178 million in emergency military aid for El Salvador. For weeks the President has claimed that $93 million of the aid was needed immediately if the Salvadoran army was to defend the electoral process and the country from continuing assault by the F.M.L.N. guerrillas. In harsh tones, Shultz declared that "to delay these funds is to hinder prospects for peace and negotiations, to prolong suffering and to strengthen the hands of our adversaries."

Congressional critics retorted that the $93 million request was a kind of White House insurance fund against a possible victory by ARENA's D'Aubuisson. If he is elected, the right-wing leader's alleged ties with El Salvador's notorious death squads are considered almost certain to doom any further Administration chances for military aid to El Salvador. Finally, a compromise was brokered by Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye of Hawaii. In return for a reduction of the proposed aid by roughly one-third, to $62 million, the Senate will vote on the measure this week.

As the aid debate raged, Congress was digesting the accusations of an anonymous former Salvadoran military official implicating high-ranking Salvadorans, including the head of the country's treasury police, Colonel Nicolas Carranza, in death-squad activities. Carranza last week denied additional charges that he had received $90,000 a year for the past five or six years as a paid informant for the CIA; privately, CIA officials also denied the connection. The anonymous accuser had flatly claimed that ARENA's D'Aubuisson was deeply involved in directing many of the killings.

But then the New York Times, which carried the initial accusations, revealed that the informer had been promised $50,000 as a "security net" if he would speak out. According to the Times, the money was raised by a Administration policy, including Robert E. White, a former U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador. White, who has been stumping the U.S. attacking the Administration's Central America policy, lost further credibility while testifying before Congress last week. Landowner Arturo Muyshondt, one of six Salvadorans whom White had publicly charged with masterminding death-squad executions from abroad, confronted the former ambassador in a Senate hearing room. Accompanied by his attorney, Muyshondt denied the accusation and announced he had drafted a $10 million damage suit against the former diplomat. Said White: "It appears my source may have been in error."

Meanwhile, the State Department and the Kremlin were hurling accusations of a different sort at each other. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko accused the U.S. of an "act of banditry and piracy" after the Soviet oil tanker Lugansk struck a mine off the coast of Nicaragua. The ship limped into Nicaragua's nearby Puerto Sandino with five injured crewmen aboard. The sabotage was the work of U.S.-backed contras who are waging guerrilla war against Nicaragua's Sandinista government. Choosing their words carefully, the Soviets accused the U.S. of "state-sponsored terrorism," a term favored by the Reagan Administration to describe acts of international subversion.

Moscow's expressions of outrage coincided with a Soviet display of naval strength in the Caribbean. The aging Soviet helicopter cruiser Leningrad, accompanied by the modern guided-missile destroyer Udaloy, were conducting what Pentagon officials described as antisubmarine exercises south of Cuba. While the Soviet ships maneuvered, the U.S. Navy was conducting Caribbean exercises of its own. A four-ship American flotilla, led by the aircraft carrier America, was later replaced by a five-vessel group that included the guided-missile cruiser Virginia. The Soviet exercises may have been a sign that Moscow still has an active interest in the waters of the Western Hemisphere. The U.S. display, coinciding conspicuously with the Salvadoran elections, was a sign that the Administration intended to draw the line against any extension of Soviet influence in Central America.

Even as the deep-water maneuvers were going on, a much smaller and more discreet U.S. military exercise was under way in the rugged terrain of central Honduras. Last week some 250 soldiers from the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division parachuted from U.S. C-130 transports into a drop zone about 40 miles northwest of the capital city of Tegucigalpa. They were joined by 130 Honduran troops, participating for about ten days in what the Pentagon calls an Emergency Deployment Readiness Exercise (EDRE). Their purpose is to prepare troops from the Southern U.S. and Panama for short-notice flights into combat conditions in Central America. Following the EDRE series, a much larger U.S.-Honduran exercise known as Granadero I--the third such exercise in the past two years--will be mounted from April 1 to June 30. As many as 5,000 U.S. troops may be involved, along with troops from neighboring El Salvador, Guatemala and Panama.

More than 1,000 U.S. military personnel are already in Honduras to lay the groundwork for Granadero I. They are part of a new U.S. military establishment, freely acknowledged by the Pentagon, totaling some 1,750 men and women. Despite Administration assurances, their presence and the existence of new, American-built military installations around Honduras have alarmed some members of Congress. One of the most prominent is Democratic Senator James R. Sasser of Tennessee, who has charged that Honduras is "being turned into an armed camp."

TIME Senior Correspondent Peter Stoler visited several of the U.S.-built installations. Among Stoler's observations: >The great majority of U.S. personnel in Honduras--about 1,300--are stationed at Palmerola, about 50 miles northwest of Tegucigalpa. They are part of Joint Task Force Alpha, whose primary mission is planning for Granadero I. The task force members are largely support troops, broken down into headquarters, communications, logistics, engineering and military police companies.

> The other major U.S. unit at Palmerola is top secret. The 300-man 224th Military Intelligence Battalion, from Hunter Air Force Base in Savannah, Ga., is separated from the rest of the compound by triple-concertina barbed wire and signs cautioning would-be intruders that sentries are allowed to use "deadly force." The 224th's activities are to fly OV-1B Mohawk and RU-21J Beechcraft reconnaissance aircraft loaded with surveillance gear over El Salvador and gather information on the movements of F.M.L.N. guerrillas.

> About 160 U.S. Army troops, including more than 100 members of the 7th Special Forces Group from Fort Bragg, N.C., are stationed at a military regional training center near the city of Trujillo on Honduras' northern coast. Last week the Green Berets were putting 600 Honduran corporals through their paces and getting ready to start a tough, twelve-week program for 1,000 members of El Salvador's newly created Bracamonte Battalion.

> Some U.S.-built facilities have already fallen into disuse. One of them is a training facility at San Lorenzo on the Gulf of Fonseca, which separates Nicaragua and El Salvador. Temporary barracks built for U.S. personnel are being sold to the Honduran army, and a 7,500-foot dirt airfield is channeled with deep ruts that would almost, but not quite, prevent a C-130 transport from making a bumpy landing. Despite that handicap, according to one military source, Honduran airfields are adequate to bring the entire 15,000-man complement of the 82nd Airborne into the country in the space of a single afternoon.

The controversy over U.S. military activity in Honduras may soon include another air-sea exercise, involving some 30,000 American military personnel. The Pentagon last week confirmed plans for a massive training maneuver, known as "Ocean Venture '84," scheduled to take place between April 20 and May 6. Designed to test U.S. units in rapid deployment, Ocean Venture will stretch from the Caribbean to the Gulf of Mexico, the Straits of Florida and the U.S. Atlantic Coast. Units including the 82nd Airborne, the 26th Marine Amphibious Unit and some 250 Strategic Air Command and Tactical Air Command aircraft will take part in the operation. Among their activities will be amphibious landings and air assault operations on the Caribbean island of Vieques, site of a U.S. naval facility next door to Puerto Rico.

According to the Defense Department, the purpose of Ocean Venture is to "enhance the perception of the capability of the U.S. to project military power," especially by "supporting our friendly neighbors in the Caribbean basin." That seemed to be the Reagan Administration's way of restating a familiar theme: if the alternative to democratic procedures is to be the use of force, the U.S. has plenty

--By George Russell. Reported by Ricardo Chavira/San Salvador and Johanna McGeary/Washington

With reporting by Ricardo Chavira, Johanna McGeaty