Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front

El Salvador military officials reported 135 casualties in fighting between government troops and leftist rebels last week. Thirty guerrillas were killed and 51 wounded, it said, adding that four soldiers were killed and 50 wounded. The Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front said it inflicted 126 casualties on the army in the same period. It gave no total of rebel losses.

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.

Representatives of the El Salvador government and left-wing FMLN guerrillas will meet U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar in Geneva on Wednesday in a bid to restart peace talks, the United Nations announced. The last effort to end a decade-long civil war between the government and the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) broke down late last year, shortly before the rebels launched a November offensive.

The guerrillas who steadfastly held together through 12 years of civil war against powerful U.S.-backed forces, then in peace became this country's leading opposition politicians, formally split Tuesday, leaving the once-formidable left here in disarray. Riven by bitter differences over direction and philosophy, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) divided into at least two groups with the withdrawal of one of its principal factions.

During the marathon hours of last month's Sandinista party convention, Daniel Ortega and Sergio Ramirez sat in the seats of honor that their long tenure as president and vice president of Nicaragua had earned them. But the two veteran Sandinistas barely spoke to each other. By the time the convention ended, Ortega loyalists had unceremoniously dumped Ramirez, who heads a faction of moderates, from the party leadership.

The newly elected Salvadoran National Assembly, including for the first time former leftist guerrillas who once fought to bring down the government, takes office Sunday. The assembly will be dominated by the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance, or Arena, a right-wing party that holds 39 of 84 seats. Twenty-one deputies come from the former guerrilla army, the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front, which disarmed itself as part of U.N.

Right-wing politician Armando Calderon Sol won a landslide victory Sunday over a leftist coalition of former guerrillas to take the presidency and conclude El Salvador's first postwar elections. In voting meant as a test of the country's troubled efforts to rebuild after 12 years of civil war, Calderon Sol of the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance, or Arena, was defeating leftist legislator Ruben Zamora by a 2-1 margin.

Like many of the party faithful, Armando Calderon Sol has decorated his office with a large portrait of the late Roberto D'Aubuisson, the cashiered army major widely believed to have organized El Salvador's most notorious death squads during the last decade of civil war. With his mentor D'Aubuisson, Calderon Sol founded the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena party) in 1981 as a bulwark against communism.

Despite facing a runoff for the presidency, the ruling right-wing party Tuesday claimed an "overwhelming victory" at the legislative and local levels in El Salvador's first elections since the civil war's end.

As international observers Monday analyzed serious irregularities in El Salvador's first postwar elections, the presidential race appeared headed for a runoff between the government's right-wing party and a coalition of former guerrillas. U.N. peacekeepers, U.S. Congress members and other observers said disorganization, delays and other systemic problems prevented large numbers of Salvadorans from voting in Sunday's historic national elections, and they called for reform.

The government's right-wing political party jumped to a substantial lead Sunday over leftist former guerrillas in peaceful but flawed elections, the first voting since the end of El Salvador's bloody civil war. Armando Calderon Sol, presidential candidate for the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance, or Arena, was leading by nearly a 2-1 margin over leftist legislator Ruben Zamora. But Zamora insisted that a runoff will be necessary.

Maria Hernandez, a 67-year-old war refugee, tried to retrieve her voter registration card three times before today's national elections. Each time, she was told the card was not ready, and now Hernandez cannot vote for what would have been her first time. In the nearby town of Arcatao, Carlos Franco Chavarria, a former guerrilla commander, received his voter card a couple of days ago, but his name does not appear on the master list.