March 10, 1999
Web posted at: 4:30 a.m. EST (0930 GMT)

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (CNN) -- U.S. President Bill Clinton will pay tribute to Central America's democratic transformation on Wednesday while acknowledging the U.S. role in the region's brutal civil wars of the 1980s.

U.S. officials said Clinton was not expected to express contrition in a speech to El Salvador's Legislative Assembly on Wednesday for the U.S. support of authoritarian right-wing governments against leftist insurgents.

Instead, he planned to praise the spread of democracy over the last decade and to urge its consolidation through better protection of human rights, freedom of the press and economic opportunity.

"He's going to commend the transformation that's taken place in the region and the strides that a lot of these countries have taken to reconcile the past and move on from the devastating civil wars, insurgencies and conflicts that marked the 1980s," said one senior U.S. official.

"He will acknowledge the past, but speak toward building a new relationship for the future," he added.

Clinton is in the midst of a four-day goodwill tour of Central America to highlight the U.S. effort to help the region recover from the devastating effects of deadly Hurricane Mitch.

U.S. officials said Clinton hoped to use the joint relief work in the storm's aftermath as a model for future cooperation between the United States and Central America.

"The partnership we developed in that crisis can be a model for the future in confronting the common challenges that we face," said one U.S. official.

Clinton on Tuesday praised the relief work of U.S. troops in Honduras and pledged a new aid package for the nation.

"You have shown the people of Central America the true colors of our men and women in uniform," Clinton told several hundred U.S. personnel gathered inside an aircraft hangar at a Honduran air base.

At their peak, more than 5,300 U.S. troops swept into Central America to pluck survivors from mud and floodwaters and clean up after the powerful hurricane.

The storm killed at least 9,000 people in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala and left millions homeless.

Honduras took the biggest hit from Mitch, with about 5,600 killed, according to U.S. estimates.

Honduran President Carlos Flores thanked Clinton for U.S. rescue efforts and added that he interpreted Clinton's visit as a political acceptance of the region.

Trying to forget history

While Central American leaders have lavishly thanked Clinton for the relief work that the United States has done in Mitch's wake, they continue to press him on a host of issues, chiefly liberalizing trade and immigration.

Some find Washington's decision last week to resume deportations of Salvadoran and Guatemalan illegal aliens a particularly bitter pill given that the region is still reeling from the storm.

During the trip, which has taken him to Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador and will end in Guatemala on Thursday, Clinton has made only oblique references to the bitter history of U.S. involvement in Central America.

The U.S. role was crucial in supporting a series of Central America's right-wing authoritarian governments which were accused of gross violations of human rights in their fight against leftist insurgencies.

In El Salvador, that support translated into $6 billion in aid to the military during a 13-year civil war that killed an estimated 75,000 people before it ended in 1992.

El Salvador on Sunday held its second presidential election since the conflict ended, with Francisco Flores of the National Republican Alliance, a party once linked to right- wing death squads, beating former guerrilla commander Facundo Guardado.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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