Meddling Goes On

The United States continues to resist the peace process in Nicaragua, perpetuating a stubborn attitude of distrust for the Central American leaders themselves, and with it a refusal to grasp the reality that the war is over.

Some Contra leaders have acknowledged that the battlefield has been replaced by diplomacy and hard negotiations, but deep divisions within the resistance have frustrated the negotiations. There has been evidence that the Reagan Administration was more interested in mending and strengthening the Contras as a viable fighting force than in accelerating the peace process. So there has been the spectacle of the most senior State Department officials consulting with the Contras but doing nothing to spur the negotiations.

Tons of U.S. food and medicine are now being flown to Honduras to supply an estimated 9,000 Contra fighters quartered there. Congress provided $17.7 million for this six-month period to feed, clothe and shelter the Contras. In the days ahead a clandestine flow of Nicaraguan money is planned to allow those still in the field in Nicaragua to buy food. The desperate condition of the guerrilla forces is largely due to the failure of their leaders to agree on the substance of peace. They have walked away from negotiations. And they have refused to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross to serve as the distributor of relief supplies despite approval of the proposal by the Sandinista government.

It is obvious that the Sandinistas have been equally resistant to the peace process. They have placed unreasonable restrictions on the Contra negotiators’ movements. They are renewing press intimidation. They have threatened broadened military action at a delicate point in the efforts to restore negotiations. They behave as if they had never accepted the terms of the August peace agreement.

But the standoff between the government and the Contras is only made worse by the meddling of U.S. officials. And it is certainly not helped by the kind of judgments articulated in recent days by Alan Woods, administrator of the Agency for International Development, which is responsible for distributing U.S. assistance. Woods accused the Sandinistas of “menacing militarism” and “harassment and intimidation” at a moment when the Contras themselves, unable to agree on a negotiating position, were frustrating talks.

Fortunately, some U.S. funding for constructive purposes is beginning to move. Agreement has been concluded to provide $10 million to the Organization of American States and Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo, head of the Nicaraguan reconciliation commission, for the verification of peace-plan implementation. And a contract has been completed with Catholic Relief Services for a $3-million pediatric medical program, part of $17.7 million provided by Congress for medical care and relief for children in Nicaragua.

The White House continues to promote Contra resistance, arguing that it is essential to force the Sandinistas to implement the peace plan. But that argument ignores the fact that it was the presidents of the Central American states, led by Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica, who played the critical role in bringing the Sandinistas to the negotiating table. It is Arias and his colleagues who now must be allowed to guide the process, free of U.S. meddling and obstructionism.