FMLN Leader becomes President of El Salvador

Salvador Sanchez Ceren, a onetime rural schoolteacher who became a rebel commander during El Salvador's long civil war was sworn in as president Sunday, the first former guerrilla to lead the Central American nation.

Sanchez Ceren, 69, began his five-year term promising "honor, austerity, efficiency and transparency" at the inauguration ceremony attended by 13 heads of state or government.

Sanchez Ceren won a narrow victory March 9 over Norman Quijano of the Nationalist Republican Alliance, which had governed El Salvador for most of the past two decades.