Reagan Begins 2-Week Push for Aid to Contras

President Reagan, beginning an intense, two-week campaign to win congressional approval of $14 million in aid for Nicaraguan rebels, said Monday night that a vote against his proposal “is literally a vote against peace.”

Reagan, addressing a $250-per-plate fund-raising dinner for Nicaraguan refugees, declared to a standing ovation: “To do nothing in Central America is to give the first Communist stronghold on the North American continent a green light to spread its poison throughout this free and increasingly democratic hemisphere.”

As he intensified lobbying in advance of votes in the Senate on April 23 and in the House on or before April 30, Reagan also tried to frame the issue around the obligation of the U.S. government to keep its commitments.

“Through this vote,” Reagan said, “America will declare her commitment to peace. Through this aid, we will say to the free people of Central America: ‘We will not betray you, we will not leave you, and we will not allow you to become victims of some so-called historic inevitability. For no evil is inevitable unless we make it so.’ ”

He added: “We cannot have the United States walk away from one of the greatest moral challenges in postwar history.”

James R. Schlesinger, defense secretary in the administration of President Gerald R. Ford,, joined in this theme Monday, telling reporters after a meeting with Reagan that “failure to support the President’s program would undermine American foreign policy (and) would indicate that American promises are not reliable.”

Also participating in the intensified lobbying effort was Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security adviser in President Jimmy Carter’s Administration, who declared that if the United States does not “face up to reality” in Central America, “it is quite likely the situation will deteriorate and we will have far more ominous choices to make. And one of these choices could be a Vietnam-type situation, something that is to be fervently avoided.”

Meanwhile, the Administration sent an Air Force jet to Costa Rica to bring President Luis Alberto Monge to Washington to promote Reagan’s aid proposal for the contras fighting Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. Basically, the plan involves spending the disputed $14 million on humanitarian aid as long as the leftist Nicaraguan regime negotiates in good faith toward a peace settlement with the contras. The Nicaraguan government has rejected the proposal.

Monge delivered to Reagan a letter declaring his “enthusiastic support” for the President’s proposal. The White House promptly released the letter publicly and escorted Monge to Capitol Hill to have lunch with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

One White House official, interviewed on the condition that he not be further identified, said presidential strategists have decided on a lobbying approach that basically is a compromise between the views of presidential aide Michael K. Deaver and communications director Patrick J. Buchanan.

Deaver, a longtime Reagan confidant, wanted the President to concentrate on meeting personally with individual congressmen. Buchanan was pushing for a nationally televised Reagan address and a major speaking tour around the country.

It was decided Monday that Reagan will speak out, but only in Washington, while spending substantial time with key congressmen.

Reagan told the banquet guests: “I pledge to you that we will do everything we can to win this great struggle. We are hopeful, we will fight on and we will win this struggle for peace.”