Facundo Guardado

Surrounded by heavy security, President Jose Napoleon Duarte and leftist guerrilla leaders who are fighting his government met for 6 1/2 hours of peace talks Sunday and agreed to continue their dialogue today. Archbishop of San Salvador Arturo Rivera y Damas, who is mediating the closed-door meeting, said that neither the government nor the guerrillas would comment on the talks while they are under way.

A final Cold War front crumbled Friday as Salvadoran presidential contender Facundo Guardado, a former leftist guerrilla commander, became the latest Latin American politician to bring his campaign to California. Just a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable for Washington to grant a U.S. visa for Guardado, who was a top commander of a guerrilla movement that so worried U.S. policymakers that they invested millions in U.S. aid and dozens of U.S.

Facundo Guardado has long taken pride in being the leading advocate for molding the Marxist guerrillas-turned-politicians of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front into a party that can win elections.

Facundo Guardado has long taken pride in being the leading advocate for molding the Marxist guerrillas-turned-politicians of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front into a party that can win elections.

A final Cold War front crumbled Friday as Salvadoran presidential contender Facundo Guardado, a former leftist guerrilla commander, became the latest Latin American politician to bring his campaign to California. Just a few years ago, it would have been unthinkable for Washington to grant a U.S. visa for Guardado, who was a top commander of a guerrilla movement that so worried U.S. policymakers that they invested millions in U.S. aid and dozens of U.S.

Francisco Flores, a 39-year-old philosopher and the new standard-bearer of El Salvador's main right-wing party, Monday was declared the winner of Sunday's presidential election. Election officials reported that with just over 95% of the ballots counted, Flores, of the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance, or Arena, had received 52% of the vote; his main challenger, Facundo Guardado of the leftist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, or FMLN, received 29%.

Salvadoran government officials and leftist guerrilla leaders talked into the night Monday, holding the longest round of peace negotiations in nearly eight years of civil war. It was not clear whether the prolonged, two-day session indicated progress or a deadlock between President Jose Napoleon Duarte and commanders of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.

On the eve of a four-day visit to Central America by President Clinton, Salvadorans voted peacefully Sunday in a presidential election that pitted a former guerrilla commander against a philosopher representing the extreme right-wing party that has ruled their tiny country for a decade. With 48% of the ballots counted, philosopher Francisco Flores, the candidate of the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance, led a field of seven candidates with 51.63% of the vote.

His political party once spurned capitalism and launched guerrilla warfare against the U.S.-backed government of El Salvador. This weekend, though, Hector Silva, a leading representative of El Salvador's FMLN--the former guerrilla group turned political party--has come to Southern California armed with a far different ideology, based on the importance of a free global economy.

In this decade's first favorable election showing for Central American leftists, Salvadoran guerrillas-turned-politicians took control of the country's major city halls and positioned themselves to vie with the extreme right wing for control of the Legislative Assembly.

Surrounded by heavy security, President Jose Napoleon Duarte and leftist guerrilla leaders who are fighting his government met for 6 1/2 hours of peace talks Sunday and agreed to continue their dialogue today. Archbishop of San Salvador Arturo Rivera y Damas, who is mediating the closed-door meeting, said that neither the government nor the guerrillas would comment on the talks while they are under way.

The signing of a new agreement by El Salvador's government and the country's guerrilla movement was greeted here Thursday with public declarations of hope, balanced by private fears that the accord left the country far short of ending its 11-year civil war. A spokesman for the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, the umbrella organization for the guerrillas, praised the accord as "a historic victory for the entire Salvadoran nation."

For the first time in nearly three years, President Jose Napoleon Duarte and leftist guerrillas fighting to oust his U.S.-backed government will meet today for peace talks, a meeting brought about by the Central American peace accord. Neither side was optimistic in advance, both saying that they do not expect any quick agreement on a cease-fire, which is supposed to be in effect by Nov. 7 under the regional peace plan.