Poor Substitute for Policy

Secretary of State George P. Shultz’s quick trip to four of the five Central American nations is at best awkward, a poor substitute for contriving a coherent policy that would finally shift the Administration from its fascination with warfare to a coordinated program to support the implementation of the Aug. 7 Central America peace plan.

Nicaragua, President Reagan’s obsession, is ripe for initiatives to ensure the resumption of the peace talks, but the evidence suggests that the secretary of state is more concerned with building a case in order to win congressional votes for more arms for the Contras and for the resumption of their guerrilla war. Shultz blamed the Sandinista regime for the breakdown of peace talks when the record indicates that the Contras’ intransigence also played a major role. The Sandinistas’ continued acts of repression, delays in releasing political prisoners and, most recently, military mobilization are obstacles in the path of reconciliation. Shultz could be most effective, however, if he affirmed the call of the Roman Catholic bishops of Nicaragua for resumed peace talks and for an end to the war “and to the violent deaths of the young, the peasants, the Indians.”

Shultz appears intent on perpetuating the illusion that democracy has been reborn in Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras at the very moment when the feeble and fragile democratic institutions that have been put in place are in grave danger. It would have been better to hear him speak more of the essential need for respect for human rights, for land reform, for civilian control over the military and for negotiated settlement of the guerrilla wars in Guatemala and El Salvador. Now El Salvador, leaderless with the critical illness of President Jose Napoleon Duarte, will receive $125 million in new U.S. aid to prolong the stalemated guerrilla war when the real need is for incentives to negotiate peace and get on with economic and social reforms.

That Shultz’s trip does not include Nicaragua symbolizes the U.S. strategy to try to isolate that pugnacious, chaotic, impoverished nation. But the trip will conclude in Costa Rica, the region’s one real democracy, where Shultz may well benefit from the counsel of President Oscar Arias Sanchez, who contrived the peace plan a year ago and who remains firmly committed to ending the supply of arms to the region wherever they come from.