U.S. Opposes Dictators of ‘Left or Right,’ Reagan Says

In an apparent shift of emphasis, President Reagan on Friday asserted that U.S. policy should be based on a belief in human rights and “oppose tyranny in whatever form, whether of the left or the right.”

The statement, contained in a presidential message to Congress, was released amid a raging debate on Capitol Hill over aid to the Nicaraguan rebels, known as contras. It appeared to be designed to influence congressional critics who believe that the Administration has ignored human-rights abuses by right-wing governments if they are committed U.S. allies.

The message had been planned for several weeks, prompted by the overturn of right-wing dictatorships in the Philippines and Haiti, officials said.

“The American people are proud when they believe we’re standing up consistently for freedom and against tyrants of all descriptions,” a White House official said, adding that the statement should be “effective in terms of domestic politics.”

A senior Administration official who briefed reporters on the grounds that he not be named insisted that Reagan’s message did not represent a change in policy.

“The real question isn’t whether you’re against tyranny--everybody is,” he said. “The real question is how to encourage a truly democratic alternative.”

The official said different policies are needed to thwart communist dictatorships “that repress their own people and subvert their neighbors” than are needed for “non-democratic regimes in which there is no viable democratic center and the only alternative is chaos or a new dictatorship.”

The memory of the 1979 toppling of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi of Iran and the subsequent ascendancy of the repressive regime of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is fresh in the minds of Administration officials. They also cite former President Jimmy Carter’s initial support for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua as an alternative to the pro-American regime of the late dictator Anastasio Somoza as an example of misplaced fervor.

“If Nicaragua was run by a right-wing autocrat worse than Somoza, and his human-rights violations were worse than Somoza’s, I don’t think it would rate a national-security threat to the U.S.,” said Patrick J. Buchanan, White House communications director. “The threat is there because of the Soviet and Cuban association.”

Although Reagan’s message to Congress says leftist dictatorships pose a unique threat to world peace, the President has nonetheless shifted emphasis in his foreign policy away from complacency toward right-wing governments and seeks instead to more assertively promote freedom and democracy around the world.

Last week, the Administration introduced a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Commission meeting in Geneva that condemned the human rights situation in Chile, an acknowledgment that its previous emphasis on “quiet diplomacy” to effect change in the military government led by President Augusto Pinochet had failed.

Reagan’s message to Congress warns the Soviet leadership that its “adventurism” in the Third World will not go unchallenged. But he tempers that declaration with the hope that “Soviet policy reviews and reassessments are more likely . . . in a succession period.” And he recalls Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s remark a year ago that the Soviet Union required “international calm” to deal with its problems.

“We desire calm, too,” Reagan said, “and--even more to the point--so do the nations now embroiled in conflict with regimes enjoying massive Soviet support.”