Shultz Calls Aid to Rebels Cost-Effective

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State George P. Shultz said Sunday that U.S. support of anti-government rebels in Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan might ultimately reduce U.S.-Soviet tensions by raising the cost to Moscow of Third World intervention.

“Success by freedom fighters, with our aid, should deter the Soviets from other interventions,” Shultz said. “A less expansionistic Soviet foreign policy would, in turn, serve to reduce tensions between East and West.”

Shultz made the comments in a speech prepared for the annual Alf Landon Lecture today at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kan. The text was made public in Washington by the State Department.

Serves U.S. Interest

Pursuing a favorite theme, Shultz said that it serves the U.S. national interest to support newly democratic governments and to promote democratic opposition to dictatorships of both the left and right.

He said the United States must be prepared to devote foreign aid funds, diplomatic activity and military assistance to support democracy. And, with an eye to the increasingly tight federal budget, he said that such spending is cost-effective.

“U.S. military assistance to those resisting Soviet-supported or Soviet-imposed regimes is certainly a prudent exercise of U.S. power,” Shultz said. “In most cases, the resources involved are small. One hundred million dollars for the Nicaraguan democratic resistance, for example, is a modest investment in a region so critical to our security.”

Also, Shultz said, “The movement toward democracy gives us a new opportunity to advance American interests with only a modest commitment of our resources.

“America’s friends and allies are all the more important today, given the limits of our own resources, the steady growth in our adversaries’ power and the understandable concern of the American people that our friends carry their fair share of the burden,” he said. “In Central America, Southeast Asia, Turkey, the Philippines and elsewhere, the success of democracy furthers our own strategic interests.

“American economic aid can be a powerful tool for democratic development,” he said. “In Haiti, for example, we exerted the influence of our economic aid at a key moment to facilitate a peaceful transition to a new era, bringing the promise of democracy to a country long ruled by dictatorship.”

Response to Abuses

He referred to the State Department’s decision to withhold economic aid earlier this year in response to human rights abuses by the now-deposed government of President Jean-Claude Duvalier.

Shultz also said that the United States must exert diplomatic pressure on behalf of democratic development.

“In the Philippines, our influence helped to bring about an election that enabled the Filipino people to make their views known. . . . We put our prestige firmly behind the principles of democratic choice and nonviolence,” he said.