Serving Notice

The House of Representatives’ vote to temporarily cut off U.S. aid to Nicaragua’s contra rebels is unlikely to stand up against a veto by President Reagan, who is determined to help the contras against all logic and common sense. But it is a signal that should prod more thoughtful Administration officials to start making plans to extricate the United States from the military and diplomatic disaster that Reagan has created in Central America.

Democrats led the move to withhold the final $40 million that the contras have coming from the $100-million allocation that Reagan wrested from a dubious but timid Congress last year. They want the money frozen until the Administration accounts for all the money that it has given the contras before--both the $27 million “humanitarian aid” approved by Congress in 1985 and the still-uncounted profits in the Iran arms scandal. Not only is Reagan most likely to veto the contra-aid moratorium, but Republicans in the Senate have threatened to kill it by filibuster.

Some may praise the vote as symbolic, but it is empty symbolism. Congress should have stood up to Reagan last year, because the contras were a losing proposition from the start and the President’s decision to support them was based on the saddest kind of self-delusion. Better to see the vote, as House Majority Leader Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.) said, as “constructive notice” that Congress has finally turned against Reagan’s dirty little war in Nicaragua. Then perhaps the Administration can begin preparing for a day when all aid to the contras is ended. That could happen this fall, when Reagan is expected to ask Congress for $105 million more for his Nicaraguan “freedom fighters” and Congress is expected to say no.

With that eventuality on the horizon, the Administration should use the contras’ last likely $40 million in aid for truly humanitarian purposes--primarily to provide help for thousands of contra fighters and other Nicaraguan refugees who will be abandoned in Honduran base camps when their war against the Sandinistas collapses, as it surely will without U.S. support. Not all the contras will want that kind of help. A few will continue fighting on their own. But as many as 20,000 Nicaraguan refugees will have to be resettled in other countries, including the United States.

An agreement on how to help Nicaraguan refugees must be a fundamental part of a diplomatic settlement of Central America’s conflicts, which U.S. officials must also start planning for now. A mechanism for peace talks is already in place--the Contadora Group, made up of diplomats from Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia and Panama. The Latin American allies have tried to persuade the Administration for years to use their good offices to draw up a peace agreement in Central America. Reagan has refused to listen, but perhaps now he will at least give State Department professionals like Ambassador Philip C. Habib, the President’s special envoy to Central America, a chance to really negotiate. If he does, a peace agreement with the Sandinistas can be had--an agreement that meets U.S. security concerns, reassures and protects Nicaragua’s neighbors and lays the groundwork for the hard rebuilding process that must follow the end of the contra war.