Word: salvadore
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...airspace over northeastern El Salvador, U.S. OV-1B MOhawk and RU-21J Beechcraft reconnaissance aircraft based in nearby Palmerola, Honduras, are conducting discreet surveillance missions. The flights, manned by pilots from the U.S. 224th Military Intelligence Battalion, have been under way since last month. Supplementing similar missions by longer-range RC-130 reconnaissance aircraft from Howard Air Force Base in Panama, the flights are intended to help fend off an anticipated increase in guerrilla activity as the March 25 election approaches. For the Reagan Administration, the Honduras-based forays have another advantage: they do not violate the self-imposed...
...airstrip. Painted dull gray, with small black letters identifying them as U.S. Army property, the aircraft bristled with electronic equipment. Despite the official wall of secrecy, off-duty members of the 224th, drinking beer in a bar at the nearby city of Comayagua, confirmed their surveillance role in El Salvador. They disclosed that before a flight, some reconnaissance crewmen gather golf ball-size rocks, which they occasionally drop on rebels when they spot them. Said an OV-1B crewman: "It's a way of sending them a message. If we can hit them with rocks, we can hit them...
...Pentagon also plans to conduct Emergency Deployment Readiness Exercises in Honduras. Men from units based in the southern U.S. or at the Army's Southern Command in Panama will be flown in. One such exercise will begin on Thursday-just three days before the presidential balloting in El Salvador. Predicts a U.S. embassy source in Tegucigalpa: "You're going to see some muscle flexing around here in the next couple of weeks...
However muscular that display, it can only underline the importance that the Reagan Administration attaches to next Sunday's Salvadoran elections. The White House is gambling that an increasingly skeptical Congress will agree that a successful vote is a substantial step forward by El Salvador on the road from military-backed despotism to civilian democracy. Put more bluntly, the Administration argument is that free, open and honest elections are worth defending: the choosing of a Salvadoran President for a single five-year term would give the White House a greater chance to unblock some $250 million in additional military...
Ideally, Washington hopes for a repetition of El Salvador's electoral achievement of March 1982. At that time, according to Salvadoran figures, some 74% of eligible voters ignored guerrilla threats and cast ballots for a 60-member Constituent Assembly. Says State Department Special Adviser Otto J. Reich: "What we're supporting in El Salvador is a process-not an individual, not a party-to reverse the country's cycle of violence. If a person is elected who continues those reforms, then we would continue to support...