PANAMA CITY Reuter: Negotiations aimed at laying the groundwork for peace talks in El Salvador planned for next Friday collapsed here tonight both sides announced.
Salvadorean officials and rebel leaders meeting here for the last three days have said they wanted the talks to proceed as scheduled next Friday in Sesori El Salvador.
But the preliminary talks on the agenda security measures and related issues broke up here this evening.
Salvadorean officials tonight blamed the leftist rebels for scuttling the Sesori talks because of guerrilla objections to government proposed security measures. In a separate news conference the rebels said they had offered to meet the government delegation again within 10 days to try again to remove obstacles to new peace talks.
“We wouldn’t want to say that the possibilities of a third meeting have been closed” Ana Guada Lupe Martinez a rebel commander and delegate to the talks here told reporters.
The rebels have been fighting the US. Backed government for nearly seven years
Two rounds of peace talks were held in October and November of 1984 but they ended in a stalemate with each side accusing the other of exploiting the talks solely for their propaganda value.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 19, 1986
