Alfonsin to See Reagan Today Seeking Sympathy on New Rift Over Falklands

Proclaiming that restored democracy in Argentina is “progressing firmly,” President Raul Alfonsin will seek President Reagan’s sympathy in Washington today to help reduce South Atlantic tensions that could undermine it.

An avuncular country lawyer who has emerged as a major international statesman, Alfonsin will meet Reagan and Secretary of State George P. Shultz today to assert Argentina’s views regarding a new flare-up with Britain over the Falkland Islands, site of a brief but bloody war between the two countries in 1982.

Last month, the British proclaimed a 200-mile fishing conservation zone around the wind-swept and treeless islands, which both countries claim and which Argentina calls the Malvinas.

“I will explain to the President our rights and the harm caused by Great Britain’s unilateral action, a provocation,” Alfonsin said in an interview on the eve of his departure. “I bring no new specific proposals.”

The Washington conversations represent a political interlude in a private visit of more academic character for Alfonsin. A center-left democrat who has restored the rule of law to Argentina and sidetracked runaway inflation with innovative economics, Alfonsin will speak tonight at Emory University in Atlanta at the invitation of former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald R. Ford.

Before returning home Friday, he will also speak at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., and at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

New Fishing Pacts

Argentina, which recently signed treaties with the Soviet Union and Bulgaria allowing them to fish waters inside the new British zone, is anxious to open talks over the future of the islands, which lie off the Argentine coast in the extreme South Atlantic.

The British say they will talk about anything except sovereignty, which Argentina demands be included on any agenda for negotiations. The policy of the United States, which sided with Britain in the 1982 war, is to urge a peaceful settlement of the dispute without taking any position on its merits.

Alfonsin’s meeting with Reagan, a last-minute addition to his schedule, is principally for public consumption at home to counterbalance Reagan’s weekend talks with British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Without knowing so, many Argentines imagine that the Reagan-Thatcher talks must have focused on the Falklands.

Recovery of the islands after a 150-year dispute is the underpinning of Argentine nationalism. Loss of the war spelled political doom for the Argentine military dictators who started it. With the armed forces in discredit, Alfonsin returned democracy to Argentina in December, 1983, after free elections.

Since then, he has effectively leashed the right-wing armed forces, reducing their share of the budget and bringing nine former service commanders, including two former presidents, to trial for human rights abuses during military rule.

In some democratic circles here, there is fear that renewed South Atlantic drama could strengthen the military’s political clout.

Affable and relaxed in a conversation at the presidential estate on the outskirts of this capital, Alfonsin said he was “extremely concerned. . . . I feared immediate incidents” when Britain declared the fishing zone, but he discounted the immediate political fallout.

“I don’t think there is any danger of the vision among Argentines over the Malvinas which would threaten democracy,” he said.

Alfonsin indicated that he and Reagan might also discuss problems of the Third World’s unpayable foreign debt.

“I don’t believe the developed countries are doing enough to help. They still don’t understand the need for a political dialogue on debt,” he said. “They still don’t understand that it is not only new democracies that can be threatened by economic problems but also world peace itself.”

Struggling to meet interest payments on its $50-billion debt, Alfonsin’s Argentina seeks structural reforms that would invigorate and modernize the economy while keeping inflation at bay.

“Unfortunately, there are no miracles, but we’re going to quickly and forcefully attack the problems of the state enterprises,” Alfonsin said in reference to money-losing government-owned companies ranging from airlines to steel plants, coal mines and inept national oil and telephone companies.

Democracy on Track

Midway through a grueling six-year term (“Probably the best moment will be when I hand over the presidential sash to my successor,” he observed), Alfonsin said he considers democracy--the theme of his university lectures--to be on track in a middle-class nation of European descent more accustomed to dictatorship.

“I think we are progressing firmly,” Alfonsin said. “An Argentina accustomed to authoritarianism still exists, but I am convinced we are reaching levels of tolerance which reinsure democracy.

“I see it all around the country. We have learned tough lessons. There is a fear of returning to the past, but we are advancing clearly toward full democracy.”

Alfonsin is under pressure from the military and conservative political forces to write an end to human rights proceedings against members of security forces responsible for the disappearance and presumed murder of more than 9,000 people in an epidemic of state terrorism called the “dirty war” between 1976 and 1980.

On the other hand, human rights groups lobby for more sweeping trials. Alfonsin acknowledged the pressures without specifics.

“We have been at this for three years. It’s certainly necessary to speed things up,” he said. “I think the people have learned a lesson; it’s as though they have been vaccinated.”