Let’s Listen

It has been a year since Central America took peace in its region into its own hands. Now the man most responsible for a peace agreement that almost--but not quite--works, Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez, has spoken out on what still must be done. Washington, where both the Reagan Administration and Congress are toying with plans that can only make things worse, should listen.

In an interview with American journalists, Arias harshly criticized the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua for not living up to the accord, which called for negotiated cease-fires to all regional conflicts and specific steps toward democracy in Nicaragua and its neighbors--Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Costa Rica. Arias said that he is “not happy with what we have achieved” in a year, but he also said that Washington must share the blame.

Arias said that the Administration efforts to overthrow the Sandinistas by giving military aid to their opponents, the Contras, is “no alternative.” In fact, he said, the Contras “are not part of the solution; they are part of the problem.” The Contras, with no hope of defeating the Sandinistas, simply allow them to be “more totalitarian, more tyrannical, more dictatorial.”

Because President Reagan’s plan has involved all force and little diplomacy, he is left with no alternative precisely at a time when Managua might yield to other kinds of pressure. The Sandinista crackdown on internal opposition was provoked by concern not over the Contras but over growing unrest among Nicaraguans, weary of war and economic chaos. The White House certainly could now use the leverage of economic aid and other forms of U.S. assistance to Nicaragua that it canceled as soon as Reagan took office in 1981.

There is nothing, short of all-out war, that Reagan or Congress can do now to pressure the Sandinistas. More guns and bullets for the Contras, which Reagan and Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) are demanding, would just prolong the futile bloodshed. A plan by Democrats to make it appear that they are ready to provide Contra aid is a shameful gimmick promoted by members of Congress who fear that Reagan will accuse them of having “lost” Nicaragua.

Congress must face the fact that Reagan has lost his dirty little war against Nicaragua and try to contain the damage. The only aid that the Contras deserve is humanitarian assistance--food, medicine, clothing--and it should be provided as part of the process of getting them out of combat and putting an end to Reagan’s slow-motion Bay of Pigs. Then, as Arias counsels, the United States must “be patient” for a few months, leaving the Central Americans to work out their own problems while the Americans elect a new President. If the bloodstained dust of Central America settles even a little during that interim, the next U.S. Administration may have better luck in dealing with Central America than Reagan had.