As the presidential race heats up in El Salvador, parties are sparring over aid from China and a shipment of weapons.

BY ANDRES OPPENHEIMER

With polls showing the race tightening in El Salvador's March 21 elections, President Francisco Flores in an interview accused China of intervening in his country's affairs by aiding leftist presidential candidate Shafik Handal.

In addition, Flores told The Herald that Handal's Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) has been receiving large caches of weapons in recent weeks from Latin American leftist groups that he declined to identify. He said the FMLN may use these weapons to create chaos and thus discourage a large turnout on election day.

Flores' government-backed right-of-center candidate Tony Saca is leading in the polls, but analysts say a small turnout could badly hurt his chances. The followers of Handal, a former guerrilla commander whose group laid down its weapons in a 1992 peace agreement, are widely seen as committed voters who are almost sure to vote on election day.

''If Shafik Handal were to win, El Salvador would abandon the system of economic and political freedoms, and adopt the Cuban model,'' said Flores, one of Latin America's leaders who has been most critical of Cuban strongman Fidel Castro. ``Today, the FMLN is in hands of the Communist Party.''

Senior FMLN officials admit to having received campaign donations from China, but deny the charges that they tried to import weapons. And Handal, in a recent interview, said he would significantly strengthen ties with Cuba if elected, but rejected allegations that he wants to copy the Cuban model in El Salvador.

According to the Salvadoran government, China's Economic Cooperation Center, a branch of the ruling Communist Party, has delivered two containers filled with computers, cameras, 76,440 FMLN-emblazoned T-shirts, caps and other trinkets to the Handal campaign. The first container arrived Nov. 26, 2003, at the Salvadoran port of Acajutla, and the second one arrived in early January, Salvadoran officials said.

Sigfrido Reyes, an FMLN congressman who heads the party's international affairs department, concedes that the items in the containers were a ``donation from the Chinese Association of Friendship with the Peoples.''

He said the group ``has relations with the Chinese government, but isn't part of the government.''

Reyes added that Taiwan is known to make large campaign donations to friendly political parties, although he said he cannot prove that the Saca campaign has received such help.

El Salvador is among a few countries that do not have diplomatic relations with mainland China but with Taiwan.

While the containers were originally documented as purchases by the FMLN campaign, their real value is millions of dollars, way above that declared in customs documents, Salvadoran officials say.

''This [Chinese support] is an intolerable interference in our country's internal affairs,'' Flores said.

Regarding the weapons, Flores said shipping documents show that a cargo of 288 guns found in a Salvadoran airport warehouse was bound for the FMLN-controlled municipality of Mejicanos. The seven-box weapons shipment had left Jan. 28 from Porto Alegre, Brazil, and gone to Peru and Costa Rica before arriving in El Salvador, Salvadoran officials say.

Flores said the weapons were for 300 people, far more than the number of security agents in Mejicanos.

''That sounded alarm bells to me,'' he said.

Reyes said the guns were marked as going to the Mejicanos municipality ``because of a mistake in the labeling.''

He added that they were purchased by a private security firm, ``and were never bought by the Mejicanos mayor's office, nor supposed to go there.''

''The president is making highly irresponsible statements,'' Reyes said. ``The country's president is supposed to take some distance from the heat of the electoral race. He's supposed to serve all Salvadorans.''

A poll released March 1 by the Jesuit University shows that Saca, a former sports announcer turned businessman, has about 46 percent of the vote, followed by Handal with 25 percent.

But skeptics note that Salvadoran polls have been wrong before, mainly because large numbers of Salvadorans don't show up to vote on election day. The FMLN has won El Salvador's last two congressional elections, and the last three mayoral elections in San Salvador, the capital.

If no candidate wins 50 percent of the vote on March 21, the two leading presidential hopefuls will go to a runoff election in late April.