Contras, Go Home

President Reagan’s crusade to save Central America, and perhaps the world, from Nicaragua has hit another embarrassing snag. The Central American nations that he says need protecting from the Sandinistas refuse to let U.S. advisers train Nicaragua’s contra rebels on their territory.

On Tuesday the government of El Salvador, to which the Administration has given more than $2 billion since 1981 to help defeat an insurgency that Reagan insists is masterminded by Managua, said that it would not lend its territory to “any destabilizing opposition force.” And a government spokesman said that that particularly means the contras. Earlier Panama, where there are several U.S. military installations, and Honduras, where the current contra camps have been a barely hidden secret for several years, also announced that they would not allow their territory to be the base for an expansion of Reagan’s war.

We do not expect this setback to deter the Administration, of course. U.S. officials are likely to use the considerable economic leverage that they have in Central America to force their reluctant allies to reconsider. They may find that money talks most persuasively in Honduras, which has received only half as much aid as El Salvador and wants more. Our only hope is that Reagan has the good taste not to try to foist the contra training bases on poor Costa Rica, which prides itself on not having an army and where even the suggestion of active involvement in the crusade against Managua will cause serious political controversy.

In the meantime, outsiders might well ponder why the Central Americans are so willing to publicly rebuff their would-be savior. Could it be that they do not share Reagan’s illusions about a war against Nicaragua? Could it be that they do not consider the Sandinistas the dire threat to international security that Reagan claims they are? Could it be that they doubt that the contras can overthrow the government in Managua? Or could it be that they realize that the $100 million that Reagan will give the contras next year is only the start of a longer, wider war in the region--a conflict of which they really want no part?

Whatever the answers, the refusal of three of four of Nicaragua’s neighbors to let the anti-Sandinista forces train inside their borders should give Reagan cause to wonder about the wisdom of his course in Central America.