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The national leadership of El Salvador's rightwing Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) was replaced April 13 under the guidance of former Presidents Alfredo Cristiani and Armando Calderon Sol. The leadership shakeup resulted from the ruling party's defeat by the socialist Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) in mid-term congressional and municipal elections on March 16.
The election outcome was widely perceived in El Salvador as a harbinger of the presidential elections in March 2004. If this pattern holds, U.S. relations with El Salvador would be significantly reshaped under an FMLN government.
ARENA has governed without interruption since 1989, three years before the end of a 12-year civil war that claimed more than 75,000 lives. Under the party's rule, El Salvador has moved steadily closer to the United States in both a political and economic sense. For example, about 2.2 million Salvadorans living in the United States annually send nearly $2 billion in remittances back to their home country.
As Central America's largest economy, El Salvador is also viewed in Washington as a regional linchpin and key player in U.S. trade negotiations that also include Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras and Guatemala. And since the United States pulled all of its remaining military forces out of Panama on Dec. 31, 1999, El Salvador's Comalapa International Airport has served as a Forward Operating Location (FOL) for U.S. military aircraft conducting counter-drug surveillance and interdiction operations over Central America, the Pacific Ocean and the western Caribbean down to Colombia.
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