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President Clinton's visit to Central America is threatening to dissolve into acrimony, with two governments rejecting a joint communique scheduled for release after Thursday's summit meeting of regional leaders.

Although their ambassadors in Washington had already approved the document after weeks of negotiation, the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala told the State Department over the weekend that they wouldn't sign it, citing objections to language about immigration and child labor, The Herald has learned.

State Department negotiators are frantically trying to salvage the agreement before President Clinton's meets in Guatemala Thursday with the presidents of the Dominican Republicn the five Central American countries, and the prime minister of Belize.

``We're trying to meet them halfway, but this is awfully late in the game,'' said one State Department official. ``These things are usually hammered out weeks beforehand.''

Official spokesmen for the governments of El Salvador and Guatemala had no comment on the proposed communique Tuesday. But top officials in both countries made no secret of their anger at Clinton's refusal to budge on a decision to resume U.S. deportations of illegal immigrants from the two countries.

``A massive deportation would cause tragic problems of stability...There would be an explosion in Central American and El Salvador,'' said Salvadoran President Armando Calderon Sol. Added Eduardo Stein, Guatemala's foreign minister: ``We have worries with respect to whether (Clinton's) visit is going to have tangible content, rather than just being a political gesture.''

Deportations of illegal immigrants from the United States was a major issue in Central America even before Hurricane Mitch swept through, inflicting heavy damage on the economies of El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras. The governments fear the loss of money that the immigrants send home, and worry that their return will only add to already high rates of unemployment.

Washington has agreed to halt deportations of Nicaraguan and Hondurans. But a 60-day moratorium on expulsions of Salvadorans and Guatemalans ended Monday, and U.S. officials say the deportations will resume soon.

Officials in El Salvador and Guatemala were furious when they learned that the agreement their ambassadors had negotiated over the past several weeks in Washington not only contained no U.S. concessions on immigration, but even thanked the United States for ``mitigating the adverse impact'' of deportations.

A copy of the proposed communique obtained by The Herald also contains provisions saying the Central American countries themselves will crack down on immigrant-smuggling and agree to new treaties on prisoner transfers.

Guatemalan officials also hit the roof over a provision promising ``the elimination of any exploitative forms of child labor,'' said sources familiar with the negotiations. The use of children in agricultural work and garment factories is a sensitive political issue in Guatemala, and last year the country's congress rejected a more restrictive child labor law urged by the UnitedNations.

Guatemala is also the only Central American country with elections scheduled later this year. ``What could be minor political squabbles in other countries could blow up into major campaign issues in Guatemala,'' said a State Department official. ``They're a lot more sensitive about this thing than anyone else.''

The decision by El Salvador and Guatemala to reject the communique both surprised and dismayed other Central American governments, some of whom didn't learn about it until after Clinton had already arrived in Nicaragua Monday to begin his four-da y visit that concludes with the summit.

``I don't know how they can do this,'' said a top official from another Central American country. ``Their ambassadors read every word of the draft communique before they approved it. In fact, the Salvadoran ambassador was in charge of writing the section on immigration. How can they back out now? The gringos are not going to negotiate a whole new document this late.''

A Central American foreign minister said that nearly all the countries involved in the negotiations thought their ambassadors had operated too independently during the talks over the communique.

``We got the first draft of the thing before we even sent any instructions,'' the foreign minister said. ``It seemed like the ambassadors thought they were a power unto themselves.'' Nonetheless, the foreign minister added, he was startled to learn that El Salvador and Guatemala had rejected the communique.

Attorney General Janet Reno on Tuesday urged Congress to slow the law-enforcement buildup on the U.S.-Mexico border, warning that a sizable influx of inexperienced agents could undermine work-force standards.

"Law enforcement experts indicate that it is risky to allow an agency's overall ratio of inexperienced to experienced agents to exceed 30 percent," Reno told a Senate subcommittee in Washington, D.C.

"As of July 1998," she told the appropriations subcommittee, "the percentage of Border Patrol agents having two years of experience or less was almost 39 percent."

While the Border Patrol has more than doubled to almost 9,000 since 1994 -- and continues to grow -- lawmakers are pressing for an additional 1,000 agents for next year. The Clinton administration's reluctance to meet that demand has unleashed a bipartisan attack on the White House.

"I believe it is inexcusable for the administration to submit a budget to Congress that does not include funding for additional Border Patrol agents," U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, an El Paso Democrat and former Border Patrol chief, told a congressional committee on immigration last month.

Reno's caution comes during a tense time on the 2,000-mile U.S-Mexico border, where violent incidents involving law enforcement agents and illegal immigrants are occurring with what appears to be increasing frequency.

In February, a Border Patrol agent near Eagle Pass shot and wounded an illegal immigrant who threatened him with a gun. And in January, an illegal immigrant who carried nothing more than a water jug was shot in the back also near Eagle Pass by Wilbur Honeycutt, a member of a DEA task force. The immigrant is paralyzed from the waist down.

Though that shooting did not involve the Border Patrol, critics blame the incident on Honeycutt's inexperience. A former part-time police officer in Bandera, Honeycutt came to Eagle Pass with little border training and had been there for less than a year at the time of the shooting.

Unfamiliarity with the border is also widely seen as having played a role in the death of Esequiel Hernandez, a West Texas teen-ager and U.S. citizen who was herding goats when he was mistakenly shot by a Marine on an anti-narcotics operation in 1997.

But Reno's go-slow approach was heavily criticized by Texas lawmakers, who see the attorney general's caution as a virtual surrender by the Clinton administration in the battle against illegal immigration and drug trafficking.

"This administration has a horrendous record when it comes to border security," said Allan Kay, a spokesman for Lamar Smith, a San Antonio Republican who chairs the House immigration subcommittee. "They're not interested. They've never been interested."

In fact, Reno told the Senate subcommittee, the Clinton administration has since 1994 added nearly 2,000 immigration inspectors and deployed "field-tested effective technologies," in addition to overseeing a 122 percent jump in Border Patrol agents. She called the border buildup "unprecedented."

"The fiscal year 2000 budget request continues this aggressive effort," said Reno, "but also reflects important management considerations that can no longer be ignored."

Reno added, "The high proportion of new agents makes it necessary that they be allowed to integrate into the Border Patrol corps to safeguard the highest standards of law enforcement professionalism for this new workforce."

But Reyes told the immigration subcommittee that all five Texas Border Patrol chiefs told a member of his staff they "desperately" need more agents. He said the administration's rationale for the slow-down is flawed, and that in El Paso, for example, only 14 percent of the agents have less than two years experience.

"You wonder who makes those decisions," said Reyes. "It certainly isn't anyone that knows or understands Border Patrol operations or requirements."

Though unpopular among lawmakers, Reno's position was met with some support among the local law enforcement community along the border. Robert Serna, the district attorney for Maverick County, which encompasses Eagle Pass, said safety should be the top concern for illegal immigrants and locals.

"I would agree with the attorney general," said Serna. "You need to make sure that when you fight a problem the fighting does not become a problem in itself."

Likewise, immigration advocates applauded the administration's push for a pause in the border buildup. They say sharp increases in border enforcement threaten the rights of immigrants while doing little to stop the seemingly inexorable flow.