Valuable Package

Central Americans must already understand that the $48-million U.S. aid package for the Contras and other programs in Nicaragua was motivated more by partisan U.S. politics than by any deep and abiding concern for the plight of the Central Americans. Both Republicans and Democrats wanted a “defensible” record as they face elections this year so that they would not be exposed to charges that they surrendered Central America to the communists or prolonged a senseless war.

But there is value in the package. The $17.7 million that will move in monthly installments to the Contras will provide only food, clothing and medicine, and it will be handled openly by civilians under contract to the Agency for International Development--not the Central Intelligence Agency. An equal amount will go directly to provide medical services for the hundreds of children who have been among the victims of the civil war. And $10 million will go to the Organization of American States to finance the overseeing of the cease-fire and peace plan.

Those, like President Reagan, who are convinced that peace is being produced from the guns of the Contras will take consolation from an agreement for prompt reconsideration of military aid if the peace process collapses. Those in Central America who contrived the peace agreement and--correctly, we think--are convinced that it was this accord that led to the cease-fire will take consolation from the exclusion of arms from this package of assistance.

The commitment of an increasing number of the Contras to the peace process is welcome. Even before the cease-fire was signed, some of the leaders had returned to Managua to reenter the political process. The statements of members of the directorate, deploring the toll that the war already has exacted from this impoverished land, seem to be recognition of the reality that warfare, on the scale of recent months, will not be resumed. Nor should it.

There are bound to be disappointments and setbacks. By all accounts the Sandinistas will maintain their hold on Nicaragua. But already that hold has been modified by an acceptance of political and press freedoms that will make more difficult the imposition of the Marxist state that some of the leaders have proposed.

In the months ahead it will be all the more important for Washington to listen to the leaders of Central America. It is they who are implementing the peace process that they themselves designed. It is they who can best identify what it is that Congress can do, beyond this new package of aid, to facilitate that process.