El Salvador: more aid needed to consolidate democracy.

Since reconstruction, sustained economic recovery and peace are interdependent - forming a "central axis for the consolidation of the democratic peace process" - El Salvador needs more international assistance to "consolidate and conclude this extraordinary experiment and this example of peace, reconciliation, reconstruction and development", Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali indicated on 3 September.

The Government of El Salvador in turn had to accelerate the land transfer programme and ensure the "free and massive participation of the people in the voting" scheduled for March 1994, the Secretary-General stated (A/481310).

After the inauguration of the new Government, he said, the Salvadorians were to build a "firm and lasting peace" within a "democratic, pluralistic and truly participatory" regime, a reactivated and transformed economy", and a "modern and independent State under the rule of law".

Reconstruction process

El Salvador was embarking on its reconstruction process with an economic base equivalent to that of a quarter century ago", with two thirds of its population living in poverty, "of whom one third in extreme poverty", the Secretary-General stated. The damage caused to "physical, productive and social infrastructure" during the 1980-1990 period was valued at over $1.5 billion.

Compounding those economic, political and institutional obstacles were "serious population and environmental problems", he reported. El Salvador was the "most densely populated country of the America" and had the highest degree of soil erosion, the most polluted water system and the highest rate of deforestation in Latin America.

Although the human rights situation in El Salvador was described as "very mixed", the trend towards a definite improvement continued, especially with the absence of enforced disappearances and torture, the Director of the Human Rights Division of the UN Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) stated (A/48/968-S/26033) on 2 July.

Violations were occurring in a "qualitatively different framework" as compared to the past, since they were "not a reflection of the will of the State", but rather acts to be interpreted as carry-overs from the situation that existed prior to the signing of the peace agreements.

Promise to comply

Secretary-General Boutros-Ghali on 7 July stated that the Government of El Salvador had promised to comply with the recommendations of the Ad Hoc Commission on the purification of the Armed Forces,

ONUSAL had verified that 15 high-ranking officers had been placed on leave with pay, as envisaged in the plan presented by El Salvador President Alfredo Fdlix Cristiani-Bukard.

On 30 August, the Secretary-General reported (S/26371) that the military structure of the Frente Farabundo Marti para la Liberacion Nacional (FMLN) had been "effectively dismantled" and former combatants had been reintegrated into the civil, institutional and political life of the country, as established in the Peace Accords. Verification and destruction of FMLN weapons and equipment had been completed on 18 August.