‘No Interest in Peace’
Having just returned from a 10-day visit to Costa Rica, I was struck by the contrast between the widespread support there for President Arias’ Central American peace plan and President Reagan’s resistance to it.
With Nicaragua on its northern border, one would expect to have found grave apprehension of a Nicaragua “military threat” by the largely anti-Sandinista Costa Ricans. Instead, of those with whom I spoke that were familiar with the plan--whether professionals, academics or businessmen--all considered their president’s call for democratization and demilitarization in Nicaragua as practical and necessary. One conservative entrepreneur stated that the Sandinistas would have to be “crazy” to attack its neighbors as an aggressor.
Isn’t it strange that our President should be pushing the destructive contra option so strongly when Central American nations and our European allies (save Margaret Thatcher of Great Britain) solidly back Arias’ nonviolent approach?
What a price is being paid in lives and misery to allow Reagan a specious boast of “turning communism around in our hemisphere.”
FREDERICK NATHAN
Ridgecrest
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