Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, March 30, 1990                   TAG: 9003300814
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A/7   EDITION: EVENING 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

MORE ARMS REPORTEDLY SENT TO SALVADORANS

The officials said Thursday that the shipments, mostly ammunition and explosives, increased following the Sandinsta defeat in the Feb. 25 elections.

According to the officials, who asked not to be identified, the Managua government is sending vessels loaded with equipment to an area off El Salvador's southeast coast.

The cargo is then loaded onto large canoes with 55-horsepower engines, which deliver the goods to a swampy area along the Salvadoran coast, the sources said.

The area is largely inaccessible to the Salvadoran Army because the FMLN rebels have planted mines there.

The operations, carried out under cover of darkness, occur "not daily but regularly," said one official.

The Sandinistas have systematically denied any role in supporting the Salvadoran insurgency since 1981. The State Department has maintained that the link between the two has been unbroken almost since the Sandinistas came to power in 1979.

As U.S. officials see it, the link will become uncertain after April 25 when President Daniel Ortega is scheduled to turn power over to President-elect Violeta Chamorro. The FMLN probably will have to shut down the command and control headquarters it has maintained in Managua, they said.

Some rebel supplies have been sent from Cuba via Nicaragua. But this source is not expected to be available to the rebels once the Sandinistas are out of power, the officials said.