Baker May Delay Contra Arms Request

Secretary of State-designate James A. Baker III has told senators that he is considering a delay in requesting military aid to Nicaragua’s Contras so that he can first launch a diplomatic initiative in Central America, congressional sources said Tuesday.

Baker told the senators he believes that military aid to the Contras will eventually be necessary as “leverage” to press Nicaragua’s leftist government to end its alliance with the Soviet Union and move toward internal democracy, some sources said.

But he also said he is seeking a bipartisan approach to the Nicaraguan issue and is willing to discuss either a delay in military aid or an arrangement under which aid would be put in an escrow account while negotiations began, they reported.

“He’s looking for a two-track system that would combine negotiations and at least the threat of military pressure,” said a source who met with Baker for more than an hour last week. “What he’s trying to do is to find some formula that gets negotiations started and uses military aid as leverage.”

Another congressional source who met separately with Baker said Baker had left him with the impression that he would indefinitely delay asking for military aid. Still undetermined, this source said, was what precise policy the new Administration would pursue instead.

And Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a telephone interview: “I sense he is looking for a fresh approach.”

If Baker seeks to use the prospect of military aid as “leverage” to force Nicaragua’s Sandinista government to accept U.S. demands, that would echo the Reagan Administration’s policy of the past four years.

Benefit of the Doubt

But while leading Democrats in Congress doubted President Reagan’s sincerity in seeking a negotiated solution in Nicaragua--in part because some Administration officials acknowledged that they would prefer a military overthrow of the Sandinista regime--the senators who met with Baker seemed inclined to give President-elect George Bush the benefit of the doubt, the sources said.

“I think we can work with Baker,” said one longtime opponent of the Reagan Administration’s policies in Central America.

The Reagan Administration has given aid to the Contras since 1981, but Congress has twice cut off military funding. In the wake of Congress’ most recent refusal, last February, to restore military aid, the rebels have withdrawn from the battlefield to camps across Nicaragua’s northern border in Honduras.

Several senators advised Baker that any attempt to request renewed military aid without a new diplomatic approach to the issue would be doomed to failure, “and he seemed to accept that,” one source said.

Baker’s conversations with senators, who will vote next month whether to confirm him as Bush’s secretary of state, were first reported on Tuesday by the Washington Post.

Sen. George J. Mitchell (D-Me.), the newly designated Senate majority leader, told the Post that he urged Baker to “take a fresh approach . . . and not begin with a big fight over an initiative he can’t win.”

Other evidence suggests that Baker is not looking for a fight. A congressional source told The Times that in the view of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Robert C. Helander, a New York lawyer who is a leading candidate to become assistant secretary of state for Latin America, is a “Rockefeller Republican” who would be unlikely to pursue a confrontational strategy with Congress over Contra aid.

And when Bush met shortly after his election with House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.), he said his Nicaragua policy would satisfy the Speaker. Wright, an opponent of military aid, interpreted that to mean Bush would not propose to arm the Contras.

Baker, who is vacationing in Texas, could not be reached for comment.