Roberto D'aubuisson, 48, Reputed Leader Of Salvadoran Death Squads

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador - Maj. Roberto D'Aubuisson, the reputed godfather of El Salvador's right-wing death squads and founder of the ruling Nationalist Republican Alliance party, died yesterday after a prolonged battle with throat cancer and bleeding ulcers. He was 48.

In the course of his political career, the former army intelligence officer was accused of fomenting a coup, plotting the assassination of a U.S ambassador and masterminding the murders of thousands of his countrymen, including the archbishop of San Salvador.

Mr. D'Aubuisson vehemently denied the charges as he made his way into mainstream politics. He became a charismatic leader of the conservative poor and a hero to El Salvador's wealthy elite, who believed saved the country from communism.

To many leftists, D'Aubuisson remained a driving force of this country's 12-year civil war, and they saw his death, coming soon after a negotiated peace, as poetic justice. Yet months earlier, the cold warrior had become an unlikely champion of peace, reining in right-wing extremists who were trying to stop President Alfredo Cristiani from signing a cease-fire agreement with the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front.

Over the years, U.S. officials implicated D'Aubuisson in some of the most high-profile assassinations, including the archbishop of San Salvador, Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero, and two American agrarian advisers in 1981.

U.S. officials accused D'Aubuisson of plotting to kill Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering. Another U.S. ambassador, Robert E. White, called D'Aubuisson a "pathological killer."

In the fall of 1981, D'Aubuisson founded his party, known as ARENA. Originally, ARENA was part of the right's political-military organization modeled after the revolutionary groups on the left. But gradually during the last decade, it evolved into a more moderate and democratic political party.

D'Aubuisson ran a rousing campaign for president in 1984 and accused the CIA of rigging the election when he lost to Christian Democrat Jose Napoleon Duarte, whom he considered a Communist. But, in what many view as a key moment in Salvadoran history, D'Aubuisson accepted the outcome.