Audience Hails Vice President’s Reply : Brother of Man Slain by Contras Confronts Bush

In a sweltering high school gym where he had come to discuss his farm policies Friday, Vice President George Bush found himself offering carefully worded condolences to a young man whose brother was killed during a contra ambush while working as a volunteer in rural Nicaragua.

Taking questions at a packed town meeting in rural southeastern South Dakota, Bush was confronted by John Linder, whose brother Benjamin was slain by the contras last April.

Linder challenged Bush to condemn his brother’s killing, saying, “Nobody has said it is terror. Nobody has said it is murder. Nobody from your Administration has said this is a wrongful death.”

Wartime Experience

Bush offered a lengthy reply that touched on his own wartime experience and his witnessing the deaths of fellow soldiers, and emphasized that he knew how painful the death had been for Linder’s family.

“‘I know the agony, having been in a war and having fought for my country,” Bush said. “It is tough. It is ghastly. For a family, it is just horrible. . . .”

But, Bush said, Benjamin Linder made a conscious choice to work on the opposite side of his nation’s allies.

“Your brother, I am sure out of conviction, was supporting the Marxist-Leninists--or maybe, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt. Maybe he was just trying to help people in the rural countryside. So, he made his choice. Of course, I mourn the death of every American, of everybody,” Bush said.

Disagrees Vigorously

Bush’s reply brought hearty applause from the audience, but Linder shook his head frequently while the Vice President spoke, and he disagreed vigorously at one point, when Bush said that according to some accounts, Linder’s brother was carrying a Soviet-made rifle--an AK-47--and owned Sandinista uniforms at the time he was killed.

The emotionally charged give-and-take, which led the crowd of more than 500 briefly to forget the blistering 100-degree heat in the gymnasium, came on the first day of a two-day swing by Bush through South Dakota and Iowa, at which he intended to speak for the first time at length on farm policy.

But the confrontation with Linder, who said he happened to be in the area to give a talk and wanted to hear the vice president speak, led to a half-hour question-and-answer session that focused as much on foreign policy as it did on agriculture.

Will Continue Support

Bush said he will continue to support aid to the contras despite the embarrassing revelations about the Administration’s secret aid to them at a time when Congress had voted to stop that aid.

And he praised Lt. Col. Oliver L. North, one of the principal agents of the secret dealing with the contras, for his testimony during the Iran-contra hearings, in which North stressed the threat posed by the Soviet Union in Central America.

On foreign policy, Bush said one of his first priorities would be to call for a world agricultural summit.

It would be a forum, he said, in which he could bring his own experience negotiating with world leaders into play in the quest for open markets.

Endorses Reagan Plan

Like President Reagan, Bush argues that the key to farm prosperity is more access by American farmers to world markets. And he endorsed Reagan’s plan to bring about a worldwide end to agricultural subsidies--a goal Reagan wants to achieve in 10 years but which Bush said might take longer.

Bush also said that two important farm policy goals are to preserve the family farm and “to get agriculture in sync with market forces”--in other words, to allow prosperity to eliminate the need for agricultural subsidies.

The vice president’s approach, paralleling Reagan’s, steers clear of the two extremes charted so far in the campaign. On the right, there is former Delaware Gov. Pierre S. (Pete) du Pont IV, a Republican contender, calling for an end to farm subsidies in five years. On the left, there is Missouri Rep. Richard A. Gephardt, a Democrat, backing a policy that would limit agricultural production in an attempt to stimulate higher farm prices.

But Bush’s tempered approach does not set him dramatically apart from his leading Republican opponent, Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, a politician with strong ties to the Farm Belt. Dole also advocates a continuation of the Administration’s agricultural policy.