Major Step Toward Peace

The five Central American presidents have agreed on a plan to demobilize the U.S.-backed Contra rebels fighting Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. The Bush Administration tried to block the accord, apparently more in a show of loyalty to its battlefield surrogates than in a serious effort to break up the peace process. But once Honduran President Jose Azcona Hoyo declared the deed done, the United States was left with only one option--cooperating with efforts to disarm the Nicaraguan rebels.

State Department officials had expected Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega to push for a Contra demobilization plan at this past weekend’s Central American summit meeting at the seaside resort town of Tela in Honduras. Before the summit, top U.S. officials traveled through the region urging the other four governments to resist Ortega’s pleas. Bernard Aronson, assistant secretary of state for inter-American affairs, put particular pressure on Honduras, which has provided the clandestine bases from which the Contras operate. He asked the Hondurans to let the Contras remain in their camps at least until elections are held in Nicaragua next February. Even President Bush weighed in, personally telephoning Azcona and Costa Rica’s President Oscar Arias Sanchez, the architect of the Central American peace plan, to argue that an armed and ready Contra army is the only way to hold the Sandinistas to their promise that the Nicaraguan elections will be fair and free.

But Ortega countered the pressure from Washington with something even more persuasive: an agreement calling for an end to the Contra war that was signed by 17 political parties who oppose the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Ortega and other Sandinista leaders got the opposition groups to sign the statement by approving electoral reforms that opposition political leaders believe will make it easier to campaign against the Nicaraguan government before next February’s voting.

The willingness of the Nicaraguan opposition to publicly break with the Contras points up a dismal fact of Central American life that the Bush Administration--and before it, the Reagan Administration--has chosen to ignore in the debate over Nicaragua. Despite public-relations efforts to portray the Contras as “freedom fighters,” the guerrilla forces have always had more support in Washington than they have in Nicaragua. All during the time that former President Reagan spent battling Congress over whether to fund the Contras, and what form that aid should take, there was a legitimate, peaceful opposition inside Nicaragua struggling to make itself heard.

The Arias peace plan, with its emphasis on diplomacy and democratic elections in Central America, has given the Nicaraguan opposition a chance to assert itself, and now the Sandinistas’ civilian opponents want a fair chance to beat them at the ballot box rather than on the battlefield. They are confident they can do so, especially considering the shambles the Sandinistas have made of Nicaragua’s economy. But they know that the presence of a Contra army in the field does not help their cause, because it gives the government a villain on which to blame all of Nicaragua’s problems and a symbol of yanqui interventionism with which to brand all opposition groups as traitors. With the Contras out of the picture, the elections, perhaps, can proceed unhampered--though the Sandinistas’ record of political blunders in the past has been destructive of the peace process.

And what to do with the Contras, estimated to number 11,000 strong? The Administration should use the balance of the last allocation of aid to the rebels, $47.9 million, to begin a process of relocation in cooperation with the United Nations, which has already expressed a willingness to help end the fighting in Central America. Those rebels willing to return to Nicaragua should be allowed to do so, with no fear of persecution. Their rights should be guaranteed by the U.N., the United States and all five Central American governments as a precondition to their repatriation. Those Contras who would prefer to leave for other countries also deserve help. It is likely that many will opt for the United States, where exile communities have already been established in cities like Los Angeles and Miami. Administration officials should welcome them, just as this country took in the Cuban veterans of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961. That is the least Washington owes them for their efforts on the battlefield.