Momentum for Peace

It looks, just perhaps, as if the gears in the process toward peace in Central America are beginning to mesh. They could become disengaged for any of a large number of reasons. But once the peace process gets under way, it will become progressively harder to stop it.

The foreign ministers of the five Central American nations--Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala--that agreed to the peace plan proposed by President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica will meet later this week to work out details. The government of President Jose Napoleon Duarte of El Salvador is reported to be encouraged by what the Arias plan holds for it in its long war with leftist guerrillas. The Sandinista government of Nicaragua is saying some appropriate things about opening its system.

And in Washington the Administration and Congress appear to be working on a compromise that may permit the peace process to continue without introducing an immediate confrontation over aid to the contras in Nicaragua.

The central question is whether President Reagan will be willing to modify his goal of ousting the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. That can be achieved only by the use of U.S. armed forces; anything short of that will require some kind of deal with the Sandinistas.

A deal was implied in the Aug. 5 proposal of the President and House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.), and made more explicit in the Aug. 7 Arias plan, which the White House said it supported.

The fury of the U.S. right-wingers about the Administration’s support of the peace process is a good indication of its potential. The danger to it is that the President may revert to his sterile support of the contras, and the contras alone, as the solution to Nicaragua.

The confused and sometimes contradictory statements coming out of the Administration last week showed that the battle over the future of U.S. policy toward Central America is continuing. The abrupt departure of Philip C. Habib as special envoy to Central America was a setback for the cause of diplomacy. The talk of compromise on contra aid is a sign of hope.

As so often before, much in the future of Central America, if not everything, depends on what happens in the United States. The long-range interests of the United States in Central America lie not in prolonging a dirty little war but in promoting peace, non-interference by nations with one another and progress toward democracy and stability. A peace process that is taken seriously in both Central America and Washington can, if encouraged, aquire a momentum of its own.