Salvadorean Rightist escapes death

Press, 1 March 1982, Page 8

Salvadorean Rightist escapes death

NZPA-Reuter San Salvador Gunmen twice tried to kill a leading Right-winger in El Salvador’s election campaign at the week-end, and the second time they slightly wounded him with a handgrenade. Major Roberto d’Abuisson, leader of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena), first came under fire when gunmen attacked his helicopter as it came in to land at the town of San Vicente. An Arena spokesman said local security forces were ambushed by the attackers and at least four soldiers were believed to have been killed. Gunmen tried again later in San Salvador, the country’s capital, hurling a handgrenade at his car when he was leaving for an election

rally. The major, hit in the back by a fragment, was taken to hospital but doctors said he was not in danger, the spokesman added. Major d’Abuisson, a former Army Intelligence officer and fierce anti-Com-munist, has told election rallies across the country that Mr Duarte had been too soft on the country’s guerrillas: Left-wing guerrillas have vowed to-wreck this month’s elections for a Constituent Assembly in which President Jose Napoleon Duarte’s Chritian Democrats face five Right-of-Centre parties. The guerrillas, who say the elections are a fraud designed to perpetuate the existing power structure, boycotted the elections by failing to register before the

deadline closed at 6 p.m. on Saturday. The elections will be held on March 28 to elect 60 deputies for the assembly, which will have powers to choose a new government. In Amsterdam, police on horseback and a riot squad platoon charged several hundred stone-throwing demonstrators at the United States Consulate during a protest against American intervention in Central America, at the week-end. The incident came towards the end of an otherwise orderly march through the city by 7000 demonstrators carrying banners with slogans such as “U.S., hands off Central America" and “no second Vietnam in El Salvador.” .