
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, May 6, 1990                   TAG: 9005080507
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: F2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

EL SALVADOR

IT SEEMED like business as usual last Nov. 16 when a group of men clad in army uniforms invaded the quarters of a Jesuit religious community in San Salvador and gunned down six priests, their housekeeper and her daughter.

The Salvadoran military has pretty much had its way in that country for half a century, and its way has included threatening anybody whose views it considered too liberal. In recent years that meant people who dared speak up for the poor and against social injustice. Among the many victims was Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, shot down at the altar a decade ago.

So at first it appeared that the killers once again would disappear behind the protective screen of the military. The slayings, insisted President Alfredo Cristiani, didn't involve anybody in authority. Only when angry voices were raised in the United States - whose various forms of aid to El Salvador top $1 million a day - did a serious investigation begin. A colonel, two lietenants and six enlisted men were arrested.

Thus far, but no farther. Nineteen members of the U.S. House of Representatives - all Democrats, but both liberals and conservatives - looked into the situation recently. The task force pronounced the investigation at a virtual standstill. The longer the wait, said the group, the less likely is it that justice will be done.

The fact that the probe reached as high as commissioned officers is unusual. But the Congress members said that other leads have not been pursued, including the possibility that other officers ordered the murders and tried to cover them up. Under Salvadoran law, conspirators can't testify against one another; unless other leads are pursued, all might go free. Business as usual.

An effort has begun in Congress to withhold half the military aid budgeted for El Salvador ($40 million this year, $85 million in 1991) unless the stalled investigation gets moving again. This could be viewed as a halfway measure. When Jimmy Carter was president, Archbishop Romero asked him to cut off all aid to the country's murderous regime.

Carter, like other U.S. presidents, continued to hope that El Salvador could reform itself while fighting off the challenge of Marxist guerrillas. How much longer will the United States prop up a government subservient to a military that wars on the people it is supposed to defend?

by CNB