Pouring Fat Into the Fire

President Reagan’s plan to pour large amounts of money into Central American police agencies is a serious mistake, typical of the shortsighted view that shapes Administration strategy for the region.

The aid plan, as outlined by Times correspondent Doyle McManus, would provide $53 million worth of equipment and training to police forces in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Costa Rica. The plan grew out of the President’s obsession with clamping a lid on Central America, and it demonstrates the government’s inability to distinguish among the nations to the south with which it must deal.

Costa Rica could use that kind of help. It is not at all clear that starved police budgets are problems in El Salvador and Honduras, or that those countries would use more money properly if they had it. As for Guatemala, it would be shameful for its brutal government to get anything at all.

The police-aid plan resulted from fears that anti-American groups in Central America will attempt more terrorist attacks like the recent assassination of six U.S. citizens in El Salvador. But simply pouring vast amounts of money into four very different countries with very different problems is not the way to go about it.

The United States is already helping the Salvadoran investigators who are pursuing the assassination case. It is also helping to train Costa Rica’s civil guards under existing military-aid programs, since Costa Rica does not have an army. If more aid is needed, Reagan should ask Congress for it, case by case, being explicit about the problems in each country and the way the money would be used to help cure them.

Starting up a wholesale program of police assistance would simply encourage abuses like those that plagued previous U.S. police-training programs in Latin America. In El Salvador, for example, there is scant evidence to suggest that police agencies there, which are known to be linked to past death-squad activity, have improved. Washington needs to take a long, hard look at the possible consequences of resuming aid to notorious agencies like the Salvadoran treasury police.

Guatemala provides a tragic example of Central American police agencies with a free hand to impose “law and order” as they see fit. Administration officials prefer to ignore them, but attacks against critics of Guatemala’s military regime continue even as junta leader Gen. Oscar Mejia Victores promises elections for a new civilian government later this year. As in El Salvador before U.S. pressure came to bear, many of these disappearances and assassinations appear to be the work of zealous security-force personnel.

Reagan should be reminded that when U.S. aid to Guatemala was ended several years ago, it was not at the initiative of the United States. Guatemala’s military arrogantly rejected aid rather than accept U.S. criticism of its bloody tactics. For Reagan to offer help now would confirm the Guatemalan military’s obstinate belief that it was right all along. It would also be a signal to repressive rightist factions all over Central America that they could resume their bloody activities without worrying about the U.S. government. That would be not just a diplomatic defeat, but a human-rights disaster as well.