Argentine Rebel Yields Control of Troops : Move Comes 30 Hours After Colonel Called a Halt to Mutiny

BUENOS AIRES —  Thirty hours after capitulating, the leader of an army uprising finally delivered control of his troops to a loyalist general Monday night, calming fears that the insurrection had not yet been quelled.

A rebel officer at the army base told reporters that Col. Mohamed Ali Seineldin “put himself at the disposition of the competent military judge” and will be transferred this morning to a place designated for his formal arrest.

Gen. Isidro Bonifacio Caceres, assigned by the army command to handle the surrender, took control of the rebellious unit at the Villa Martelli munitions base on the northern edge of Buenos Aires, the rebel officer said.

As the hours passed Monday and Seineldin remained armed and in apparent command of the rebel unit, Argentines had begun to ask whether their elected government maintained any authority over the military.

President Raul Alfonsin was thrust into a profound crisis, caught between the unresponsive armed forces and public demands for signs that the civilian government was still in charge.

Alfonsin’s government insisted that it had resolved the three-day insurrection Sunday, when the rebels were surrounded by loyalist tanks. Alfonsin said the government had refused to make any concessions or negotiate with the several hundred mutinous soldiers.

But Seineldin, a right-wing nationalist who launched the mutiny Friday to press demands for an amnesty for officers convicted of human rights abuses, seemed to be flouting the agreement reached Sunday night.

“The situation is very fluid,” he was quoted as saying after inspecting his soldiers Monday afternoon at the Villa Martelli base. “I don’t know when I will give up.”

Two congressmen who tried to visit the base Monday were turned away by a major who said that Seineldin, 54, still commanded the unit. Legislator Miguel Monserrat said the rebuff showed that “Seineldin, who supposedly was to be detained, not only is not in custody but apparently continues in rebellion.”

News reports said Seineldin had to persuade his comrades that he was honor-bound to carry out his pledge to surrender. Persuaded to comply, the rebel tank units pulled out of the base and rumbled through the residential neighborhood en route to their own units. It was unclear how many of the mutineers would be charged along with Seineldin.

A military base in rural Mercedes that had remained in revolt also agreed to lay down arms after discussions with Seineldin, the rebel spokesman added.

The delay in Seineldin’s arrest, suspicions about a possible secret deal and the clear reluctance of many units to help suppress the rebellion contributed to concern about the authority of the elected government. Since 1930, when Argentina experienced the first of its modern-day military coups, the army’s subordination to civilian authority has been a concern.

Seineldin and his forces have insisted that they seek no political power and are not fomenting a coup. But if they are able to dictate such conditions as the resignation of the army’s commander, the power of the commander in chief--the elected president--appears to be at stake.

Alfonsin said he gave firm orders Saturday morning, soon after returning from the United States, that the uprising be “suffocated.” But that afternoon, the rebels broke out of their first base, the army infantry school inside the huge Campo de Mayo base, and traveled unmolested to the Villa Martelli base.

After a tortoise-paced journey, loyalist tanks surrounded Villa Martelli on Sunday, while hundreds of civilians taunted rebels guarding the gate and attacked them with rocks and firebombs. In a day of skirmishes, two demonstrators and one police officer were killed and about 40 people were wounded. The loyalist tanks suddenly withdrew in the evening after the government announced the rebels’ capitulation.

Detailed reports quickly spread that Gen. Jose Dante Caridi, commander of the army and the man who conducted the negotiations with the rebels, had agreed to resign in return for the mutineers’ surrender.

Alfonsin denied any such pact, saying that Caridi would continue in his post with the president’s full confidence. Monday evening, facing a chorus of criticism and questions, senior government sources reiterated that there had been no deal. The Defense Ministry reiterated that Seineldin would be transferred to a military unit and placed under arrest once the rebel units were deactivated at Villa Martelli.

But reporters permitted inside the base said that rebel soldiers still walked around armed and that Seineldin presided over an assembly of troops in the afternoon.

Maj. Juan Brun, a spokesman for Seineldin, had said in a radio interview from Villa Martelli: “There is no surrender. There is a pact, between Caridi and Seineldin, on the basis of the unity of the army and the honor of the institution.”

He said the agreement called for Caridi’s resignation by Christmas.

Loyalist forces who were arrayed outside the base were not a major concern, the officer said, because “we knew they were not going to shoot.”

Nestor Vicente, presidential candidate of the United Left coalition, said “the only loyal army in this crisis was the people,” who defied the rebels at the base Sunday and turned out in the tens of thousands around the country to demonstrate in support of democracy.

‘Flagrant Challenge’

A major daily newspaper, Clarin, expressed a widely shared view: “Everything indicates that the government found itself practically without military force to end what it considered a flagrant challenge to its authority.”

Pagina 12, a new newspaper, suggested that Caridi had made a deal with Seineldin without telling the president, considering the dispute an army affair. The paper noted that Seineldin would be tried by a military court as a mutineer, not by a civil court, adding: “This is just one more chapter in a long history of civil concessions to military power that has been marked with impunity, special laws and juridical subtleties.”

Students at the University of Buenos Aires, angered by the delays, occupied several buildings Monday evening to protest against any possible amnesty law for the military.

The armed forces’ prestige remains low because of their defeat in the Falklands War with Britain in 1982 and memories of the killing of at least 9,000 people during their war against left-wing subversion during the late 1970s.

Few envision a coup in the short term. But observers say Alfonsin would suffer an immense loss of prestige if he were seen to be hostage to the military’s increasing demands for a share in decision-making, even if only in military affairs.

After a mutiny against Alfonsin in April, 1987, the government also denied making any deals. But soon afterward, it announced measures limiting future prosecutions for human rights abuses committed during the military regime of 1976-83. Alfonsin, a lawyer and human rights campaigner, had made prosecutions a cornerstone of his 1983 election campaign.

Yet the few trials that went forward still engendered unrest in the army, which considered its suppression of subversion an honorable campaign. A second mutiny occurred last January.

Confronted with budget cutbacks and low salaries, the military remained disgruntled, not least at Caridi’s purge of officers who took part in the previous two insurrections. Seineldin himself was recently passed over for promotion.