Central American peace with honour for U.S.?

Press, 23 September 1987, Page 33

Central American peace with honour for U.S.?

By

STORER ROWLEY

Managua, Nicaragua The Leftist Sandinista regime has given the United States President Mr Reagan, the perfect opportunity to gain peafce with honour and an end to the bloody war his Administration has funded for six years, Nicaraguan officials contend. But the peace accord signed on August 7 in Guatemala City by five Central American presidents instead has thrown the Reagan Administration into a state of utter confusion, said Sandinista and Western officials. Mr Reagan is under intense pressure from American conservatives to continue funding a war for democracy against a regime that, ironically, is now promising to democratise, they pointed out.

The Democratic-con-trolled United States Congress is virtually certain to withhold any new fund-

ing for the Administra-tion-backed rebels, known as contras, until the November 7 deadline set by the Guatemala accord for a cease-fire and restoration of civil liberties through Central America.

Senior officials in Nicaragua’s Marxist-style Government argue that Mr Reagan eventually will have to accept the peace accord signed by the president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, and four other regional presidents, because Central America’s leaders and many members of the United States Congress are behind it. Mr Reagan has got to come to grips with the reality and the fact that the Sandinistas are not going to go away, and that the Central American Governments have accepted them as a legitimate Government,’’ declared Alejandro Bendana, general secretary of the Nicaraguan Foreign

Ministry. “The only way he’s going to reverse this revolution is with direct intervention,” Mr Bendana said recently, alluding to Mr Reagan’s oft-stated reference to the Government he calls a Soviet “beachhead in Central America.” One senior Sandinista official, who spoke on the condition he not be identified said: “If he was smart, Mr Reagan would declare victory and say, ‘we've won what we want. The Sandinistas have agreed to democracy, contras, you’ve done your job and you can go home’.” Washington’s confusion has been apparent from the beginning. It was the then United States House of Representatives Speaker, Jim Wright, who leaked news of the peace agreement on August 7 in what Nicaraguan officials saw as a hedge to prevent the Administration from

torpedoing it. A week later, Mr Reagan’s special envoy for Central America, the respected veteran United States negotiator, Philip Habib, abruptly resigned, reportedly because the Administration refused to enter into high-level peace negotiations immediately. The adoption of the Guatemala plan, proposed by the Costa Rican President, Mr Oscar Arias Sanchez, amounted to a snub of a peace plan proposed days earlier by Mr Reagan and Wright. The Arias plan disturbed the Administration because it has no provisions for ending Soviet and Cuban influence in the region. In the three weeks since the peace accord was signed, Mr Reagan has continued to pledge his support for the contras, who are trying to overthrow the Sandinistas. Their war continues with attacks on peasant co-

operatives and Sandinista units. Mr Reagan’s strategy is to continue military pressure on the Sandinistas to make sure they keep their word. Indeed, some experts feel they agreed to democratise because that pressure has already brought the Nicaraguan economy to a standstill and threatens the goals of the 1979 revolution that brought the regime to power. A petrol shortage is the latest crisis, and Mr Ortega announced harsh restrictions on consumption recently. Prices for petrol and diesel fuel may be raised up to 100 per cent. Mr Reagan told Nicaragua recently that he would continue aiding the contras even though he supports the peace plan, and he expressed profound mistrust of the Sandinistas, whom he accused of reneging on past promises of democratic reform.