Kemp Urges Reagan to Junk Latin Peace Plan

Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, urged President Reagan on Thursday to junk his Central American peace plan and ask Congress for $210 million in military aid for the Nicaraguan rebels.

Kemp said the plan arranged last week with House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) would mean the death of the contras and would open up Central America to unchecked Soviet and Cuban-sponsored Communist subversion.

Kemp, appealing to conservative forces, said Wright has abandoned Reagan by endorsing a subsequent peace plan proposed by President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica and accepted by four other Central American presidents at a meeting in Guatemala City last week.

The Arias plan “is not a path to peace but, I’m afraid, to appeasement,” Kemp said at a news conference.

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said Monday that the President has put his plan on hold in order to give the Arias plan a chance to produce peace.

Reagan’s plan calls for a cease-fire in Nicaragua, followed by an end to Soviet Bloc military aid to Nicaragua and American military aid to the contras, and negotiations leading to a democratic system in Nicaragua.

The Arias proposal calls for a cutoff of all external aid to Central America’s various insurgencies but not to governments--so that Nicaragua’s Sandinista government could continue to receive aid from Cuba and the Soviet Bloc.

Since working with and endorsing the President’s peace plan, Wright has also endorsed the broad concept of the Arias plan.

“The President should go to Congress and ask for an up or down vote on this issue and find out if Jim Wright and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party will allow the Soviets a base in this hemisphere,” Kemp said.