FMLN Candidate Gives Guarantees

San Salvador, Jan 26 (Prensa Latina) Farabundo Marti Front for National Liberation (FMLN) candidate Mauricio Funes asserted that if he wins the presidency, he would offer a fluid and clear relation of mutual respect with the Salvadorian media.

"I am not demanding ideological affiliation to build a relation with the media. A communication medium has the right to its editorial line," stated the journalist of well known work and criticism of the Arena party governments.

The FMLN candidate said his disagreements with some communication mediums answered to statements by their owners and not to the behavior of editors and columnists, La Prensa Grafica daily reported.

He said the attitude of El Diario de Hoy daily's owner was offensive and not of ideological difference.

Funes highlighted that he would respect the Salvadorian publications' trends and will not demand "editorial or ideological affiliation" from them.

Thus, according to his words, he will not "grant privileges to any communication medium in the interest of its editorial line."

Polls carried out by private pollsters, newspapers and academic entities agreed that the journalist is the favorite in the vote intention, prior to the elections on March 15, 2009.

Work of Salvadoran Troops in Iraq Questioned

San Salvador, Jan 26 (Prensa Latina) The Prosecutor of Human Rights, Oscar Luna, questioned the work of more than 3,000 Salvadorian soldiers, members of the Cuscatlan Battalion, in support to the US occupation troops in Iraq, since August 2003.

"When one speaks of humanitarian help we don't have clear on what the help has consisted; when one speaks of collaborating in the reconstruction of the people of Iraq, we neither have elements on giving evidence on why it was made for, said Luna, mentioned Monday by Salvadorian newspaper La Prensa Grafica.

The troops of the 11 contingents sent to the Arab territory carried team armaments and other devices of death, in correspondence with the publication.

Luna urged the leader and the authorities of defense of the Central American country to present a report about the mission deployed by the Salvadoran troops in Iraq and to let the population know about it.

The return of the soldiers of the 11th Cuscatlán Batallion was decreed after the Security Council of the United Nations decreed, in December of 2008, the end of the occupation process in the nation of the Middle East.

The return will take place this week, in a context marked by the campaign for the presidential elections, programmed for March 15.

The newspaper remembered that the Salvadoran troops in Iraq were part of the Multinational Coalition, integrated at the beginning by forces of 22 countries, led by the US.

Hardly a year after the US military intervention started, the Latin American governments removed their contingents, but El Salvador maintained the collaboration in the Shiite sacred city of Nayaf and in other towns, such as Diwaniya, Al Hilla and Al Kut.

In the five years in Iraq the Salvadorian Armed Forces reported five dead soldiers under different circumstances, and 20 injured, despite the decision of Salvadorian President Elias Saca to send a similar contingent to Lebanon.

The second Salvadorian contingent destined to Lebanon will depart in the next days to Spain, where it will be trained as part of the infantry unit of the Spanish contingent, to do monitoring works of the cease of fire, surveillance of the common Lebanese-Israeli border and withdrawal of mines.