SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador -- A plane crash outside El Salvador's main naval base slightly injured two American military advisers and their Salvadoran pilot, a Salvadoran military spokesman said.
The foreign ministers of Honduras, Costa Rica and El Salvador are scheduled to meet today to discuss permitting military-ruled Guatemala to join a regional organization that promotes democratic change in Central America.
The meeting in San Salvador followed recent elections that replaced military men with civilians in important offices in Honduras and El Salvador and saw Costa Rica, the area's showcase democracy, vote in a new ruling party.
Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, who dissolved a military junta last month to become president of Guatemala, has pursued improved relations with Washington and his Central American neighbors since gaining power in a March coup.
Ties have strenghthened recently between El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica, with the civilian leaders showing a common resolve to resist leftist revolutionary movements in the region and isolate leftist-ruled Nicaragua.
Honduras has sent some 2,000 troops to help El Salvador's army battle leftist guerrillas along their border in the biggest military offensive of the three-year-old Salvadoran civil war.
Two U.S. navymen stationed in El Salvador on a training mission suffered minor injuries when their chartered Piper Cherokee plane crashed Saturday outside El Salvador's biggest naval base, a Defense Ministry spokesman said.
The spokesman would not discuss the cause of the crash or identify the Americans for security reasons but said their Salvadoran pilot, Felipe Alvarado Miranda, was also slightly injured.
He said Salvadoran sailors who have been receiving training since early this year from the two Americans at the naval base in La Union, 132 miles southeast of the capital, pulled the men from the damaged craft.
