When suspected right-wing commandos backed by the U.S. killed six Jesuit priests in El Salvador last month, international attention was riveted on that war-torn land, which has been buffeted by 10 years of civil conflict and a recent guerilla offensive.

Almost obscured amid the uproar--and the later discovery of Soviet-made arm shipments to the region--were the very real connections between Harvard University and two of the slain men.

In interviews this week with officials at Harvard, and in the U.S. and El Salvador, a picture has evolved that links the University to Jesuits Segundo Montes and Ignacio Martin-Baro. The pair, who were highly placed scholars within the embattled Jesuit academy Universidad Centroamericana Jose Simeon Canas in San Salvador (UCA), worked at promoting their cause within Harvard's Center for International Affairs (CFIA) and a Harvard-based international scholars program.

Martin-Baro, 47, was an annual speaker at the Divinity School and last spoke this January. Montes, 56, was a researcher who wrote a University report in 1985 studying non-violent resistance to state-sponsored terror.

The deaths of the priests have further set back the struggling Central American peace process.

A Pivotal Moment

The November 16 slayings of the previously untouchable Jesuits, their live-in cook and her daughter came at a pivotal time for the region, which had been nearing an international settlement mediated by Costa Rican leader Oscar Arias.

Coming five days into a fierce offensive by leftist Salvadoran rebels which has reached the wealthiest areas of San Salvador, public sentiment had begun to swing to the rightist government under Alfredo Cristiani. Many saw the offensive, which killed hundreds of civilians and rebels, as a last-ditch effort to provoke outrages by a government closely identified in the past with the severest death squads in Latin America.

The slayings indicated the success of the rebel strategy. Only the near simultaneous discovery of Soviet-built arms aboard a crashed Cuban helicopter in the area deflected worldwide outrage. U.S. backed officials decried Cuban-intervention in the region, and peace plans were postponed.

In response, Jesuit clergy throughout Central America have issued an ultimatum to the Salvadoran government to bring the killers to justice or else face being held responsible for the deaths. So far those ultimatums have passed quietly.

The Jesuits have also criticized the State Department for allegedly intimidating a key witness of the murders into failing six lie detector tests in the U.S. The witness, who was brought to the U.S. after Jesuits said she faced retribution in El Salvador, has claimed she saw 30 armed soldiers in camouflage torture and kill the victims.

The Salvadoran government has issued a $250,000 reward for the killer.

'Dedicated to Peace and Justice'

"They were men that were dedicated to their struggle for peace and justice," said Father David Hollenbach of the Weston School of Theology, an associated school of Harvard University. "That was not easy. They were threatened with death."

Hollenbach, a Jesuit closely acquainted with Montes and Martin-Baro, issued his remarks at one of dozens of vigils and remembrance ceremonies held in recent weeks at Boston College, Holy Cross, Fairfield University and at Catholic churches around Harvard Square and Central Square.