U.S. Donors Send Supplies to Nicaragua

Protesting the Reagan Administration’s trade embargo against Nicaragua, three private American aid groups airlifted 25,000 pounds of donated medical supplies to Managua on Friday.

“The three groups are here because we feel an outrage at the embargo,” said Richard Walden, a Los Angeles lawyer who is executive director of Operation California, one of the three.

Operation California is “funded by the entertainment industry,” Walden said, adding that its supporters include Julie Andrews, Ed Asner, Mike Farrell and Norman Lear.

The other two private organizations that helped bring the planeload of medical supplies are Oxfam-America and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee.

The Reagan Administration imposed a trade embargo on Nicaragua in May as a sanction against the revolutionary Sandinista government. The embargo--called a blockade by the Sandinista government--does not apply to medical supplies.

Exempt From Embargo

“This is all exempt cargo,” said Walden, 39, after stepping off the DC-7 charter plane that brought the medical supplies from Los Angeles.

He said that the supplies include vitamins, antibiotics, other medicines and surgical equipment. They were donated by American hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and physicians, he said.

The supplies are to be distributed to rural clinics in guerrilla war zones by private agencies, including the Nicaraguan Evangelical Committee for Aid and Development, a Protestant group, and Caritas, the Catholic relief agency.

Walden said that the supplies are not intended for use by Nicaragua’s army, which is fighting U.S.-backed guerrillas known as contras.

“Operation California, Oxfam and the Unitarian committee as a policy do not aid fighting forces on any side of a conflict,” he said. “Our intention was to use these medicines for innocent civilian victims of the war.”

Response to House Vote

Dr. Christopher Stowell of San Diego, a Unitarian committee officer, said the committee’s participation in the medical airlift “is a response to the vote by the House of Representatives in June to provide ‘non-lethal’ aid to the contras.”

Pablo Coca, Nicaragua’s deputy health minister, confirmed that the supplies are intended for civilian use but said that they would not be denied to a wounded soldier in case of need. Coca was at the airport Friday to thank the airlift organizers.