The Sabotaging of Peace

Revelations of a secret move by the United States to pressure Honduras to supply the Contras in their guerrilla war against the government of Nicaragua are shocking--fresh evidence of the contempt with which the Reagan Administration holds the Central American peace plan.

The Hondurans resisted the pressure and refused the clandestine supply operation. That was the correct thing for them to do. They respected their obligations under the treaty.

This move by the Reagan Administration raises new and alarming questions about the deployment of U.S. troops in Honduras, where a 2,000-person force was strengthened by 3,300 additional troops last week--ostensibly in response to the incursions of Honduran territory by Nicaraguan forces in hot pursuit of the Contra guerrillas. There would appear to be no assurance that those troops are not in themselves involved, either directly or indirectly, in some sort of resupplying of the Contras in defiance of Congress.

Now a group of senators has offered its own proposal of $84 million in so-called humanitarian aid for the Contras and the wherewithal to speed $5 million in arms, previously paid for, to the Contras. And President Reagan has visited Republicans on Capitol Hill to prod them into action on Contra aid before the Easter recess next week. Those things, no less than the pressure on Honduras, are flagrant violations of the Central American peace agreement, defying the wishes of the Central Americans. Any Contra aid at this time can only make more difficult the sensitive cease-fire negotiations now under way in Nicaragua.

Reagan’s new strategy, in his single-minded determination to pursue the proxy war in Nicaragua, is to portray congressional hesitation on Contra aid as a sellout. Those who vote against aid will bear the blame of the “loss” of Nicaragua to the Marxists, he argues. But that is not true. If anyone “lost” Nicaragua, it was the Somoza tyranny and those in the United States who supported it and profited from it. Those who vote against Contra aid now are voting for a peace plan contrived by the Central Americans themselves--the plan most likely to end the years of warfare and to increase the possibilities for democracy in the region, even in Nicaragua.

There is only one appropriate response for the U.S. government: the faithful implementation of the peace agreement. The United States can best serve the cause of peace with disengagement.