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

DATE: THURSDAY, April 5, 1990                   TAG: 9004060707
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

END SALVADORAN AID EXCEPT HUMANITARIAN

MARCH 24 marked the 10th anniversary of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador. In 1979, Romero wrote President Carter asking that the United States send no more military aid to El Salvador. "We are tired of weapons and bullets," he wrote. "Our hunger is for justice, for food, for medicine and for fair development."

Both military and economic aid continued, however, and at the rate of $1.5 million per day. While the United States cannot be held responsible for all the death and destruction in El Salvador in the past 10 years, the $4.5 billion we have sent claimed its share of the 71,000 deaths of the past decade. No Salvadoran family has remained untouched by the horror and grief.

Can we imagine the benefits that would have accrued if all the aid had been spent on non-military projects?

Of course, this would assume that the civil war had ended. And that points to a flaw in policy toward El Salvador: The State Department appears to presume that the war cannot end except by a military victory. This is a tune we recognize.

Sen. John Kerry and Congressman Ronald Dellums have introduced bills in Congress to end all but humanitarian aid to El Salvador, unless certain conditions are met. (Congressman Boucher has signed on to the Dellums bill.) The conditions include the prosecution of those responsible for the murders of the six Jesuit priests and two women in November, as well as good-faith negotiations to end the civil war.

The bills to end aid are the correct signal to the Salvadoran government and should be supported.

Or must the death toll reach 100,000 before we act? What is the United States' moral threshold? By how much must it be exceeded before we scream enough is enough? RODERICK D. SINCLAIR BLACKSBURG

by CNB