Salvador Rebels to Call for Travel Ban

SAN SALVADOR. El Salvador--In the wake of the assasination of the president of the El Savador Human Rights Commission, leftist guerrillas announced yesterday that they would call for a travel ban and labor groups also announced their intention to protest the death.

In a broadcast monitored in San Salvador, the rebels' clandestine Radio Venceremos said it will call for the travel ban later in the week--they did not name a date--in response to the fatal shooting Monday of Herbert Ernesto Anaya, the commission president.

The National Union of Workers, the largest opposition labor organization, announced it was arranging undisclosed "protest activities," along with several student groups.

Two men firing handguns with silencers shot Anaya, 32, as he was about to drive two of his children to school, police said.

In Washington, the State Department condemned the assassination but noted that political violence has declined in the past three years in El Salvador.

"Despite this tragic incident, we have no reason to believe that El Salvador's progress in this area is threatened," spokesman Charles Redman said.

None of the five guerrilla groups in the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front coalition, nor any of the rightist death squads active in the country, have claimed responsibility for the assassination.

But Radio Venceremos and other leftist media, as well as the commission, charged that death squads, generally believed to be linked to the military, killed Anaya.

Ordering bans on travel has been a favorite tactic in the 8-year-old guerrilla war, and the rebels often fire on any vehicle they encounter on the roads.

On Monday night, about 100 supporters and friends of the Human Rights Commission took Anaya's body to the Metropolitan Cathedral for a wake and staged a sit-in. Others yelled anti-government slogans and played taped protest songs outside.

A commission spokesman, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Anaya's sympathizers also planned a series of protest rallies, including one outside the U.S. Embassy with Anaya's coffin, before his funeral Thursday.

President Jose Napoleon Duarte's U.S.-supported Christian Democratic government, which has voiced its commitment to pursuing peace talks with the rebels and eliminating human rights abuses, said it would investigate Anaya's death and bring those responsible to justice.

But the Radio Venceremos broadcast quoted both the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front and its political ally, the Democratic Revolutionary Front, as saying the killing endangers further peace talks between the government and leftist forces.

Under a peace plan signed by the five Central American presidents last August, representatives from both sides have held two meetings to try and arrange a cease-fire, so far without success. A third meeting has been planned to start next Friday in Mexico.

But the Radio Veceremos broadcast said, "This repressive escalation threatens further meetings for a dialogue in Mexico, since it would be pointless to hold it if these crimes are not solved."

The commission and other human rights groups estimate that 65,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since the war begin in 1979.

The Human Rights Commission, a private group of lawyers and other professionals, has maintained that it is an independent organization. But rightists among the military have often accused it of sympathizing with the leftists.

For fear of reprisals, the commission has refused to say how many members it has or identify them, except for the president, the spokesmen and other top leaders.

Three other members of the Human Rights Commission have been killed since 1980 and two others disappeared while in police custody.