University of New Hampshire, Space Science Center, Morse Hall, Durham, NH 03824-3525

DC electric field models for electron acceleration in solar flares are often assumed to suffer the problems of accelerating all the electrons to low energies, inefficiency at high energy, and requiring a return current to balance the current of the mobile electrons. It is argued that the difficulties can be removed by considering a model of collisionless particle acceleration in a large-scale reconnecting current sheet with a nonzero magnetic field and a highly super-Dreicer electric field due to fast magnetic reconnection in the solar corona. The magnetic field structure in the sheet determines the electron/proton ratio in accelerated particles. In particular, physical conditions can be identified that lead to either flares in which electrons primarily contribute to hard X-ray generation or the electron-rich flares, characterized by unusually large electron fluxes at gamma-ray energies extending up to a few tens of MeV.