ONUSAL: mission accomplished.

Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali declared that El Salvador had "moved decisively away from the violence and divisions of the past, towards a society based on peace, democracy and human rights". Although the mandate of the UN Observer Mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) was ending on 30 April and chat operation was to leave the country 43 months after the initial human rights observers had been deployed, the UN work was "not yet complete", the Secretary-General stated on I April, at a dinner hosted by Salvadoran President Calderon Sol in the capital city of San Salvador.

A small team would remain in El Salvador "to continue its observation of the areas of the peace agreement that remain outstanding", he added.

ONUSAL would be remembered by Salvadorans, Mr. Boutros-Ghali said, not only for its peace-keeping work, but also for monitoring human rights and national elections, observing the disarmament process, demobilization and land resettlement programmes, training of judges and police officers, as well as its development projects to "bring clean water to distant villages, to train health workers or to improve crops".

But the essence was "greater than the sum of these parts", the Secretary-General stressed. The UN mission was to bring "peace . .. through justice, human rights, democracy and development", allowing people to "realize their own potential in freedom".

Established under Security Council resolution 693 11991) of 20 May 1991 as a human rights monitoring mission, ONUSAL was the "first international mission to undertake verification within a sovereign United Nations Member State, prior to a cease-fire agreement", Mr. Boutros-Ghali said. It later became multidimensional and "pioneered the second generation" of UN peace keeping operations.

The Council on 23 November 1994 decided, by its resolution 961 (1994), that ONUSAL's withdrawal was to be completed by 30 April 1995.

The Council, in a 17 February letter (S/1995/144) welcomed the Secretary-General's proposal to put in place, following the disbandment of ONUSAL, a mechanism to enable the UN to "continue to discharge its responsibilities without interruption", as requested by the Government of El Salvador and the Frente Farabundo Marti pare la Liberacion Nacional (FMLN)--the signatories to the 1992 peace agreements.

In recommending the establishment of a small team for an initial six-month period, the Secretary-General on 6 February had also proposed (S/1995/143) that its capability should be to "provide good offices, to verify implementation of the outstanding points on the peace agreements and to provide a continuing flow of accurate and reliable information".

In his view, such a step was essential, since a "somewhat disquieting situation" still existed in El Salvador.

On 24 March, the Secretary-General informed (S/1995/220) the Council that the areas requiring verification included: the completion of agreements on land transfer and other reintegration programmes; approval of legislative measures recommended by the Commission on the Truth in March 1993; and strengthening of the National Civil Police, the National Counsel for the Defence of Human Rights, the judiciary and the electoral system.

Overall, he went on, ONUSAL had helped El Salvador to take "giant strides away from a violent and closed society towards a democratic order. . . . We are now entering a period during which Salvadorian institutions, strengthened and reformed pursuant to the peace accords, will have to assume their responsibilities in full", the Secretary-General stated. He hoped that the necessary legislative action "will be rapidly taken and acted upon".

As for the UN, the Secretary-General assured, it stood "ready to lend assistance in this regard".