Central Americans Urge U.N. to Send Peacekeepers to Region

Central American foreign ministers urged the United Nations on Wednesday to dispatch highly mobile international peacekeepers from West Germany, Spain and Canada to police the security provisions of the long-stalled 1987 regional peace plan.

The agreement among the five foreign ministers--representing Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and Honduras--was hammered out during a daylong meeting at the United Nations. U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar accepted the proposal in principle, although it still must be approved by the Security Council.

Costa Rican Foreign Minister Rodrigo Madrigal said the agreement will provide “new tools” to revive the peace process, which bogged down shortly after it was signed in August, 1987, although Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize that year for devising it.

Nicaraguan Foreign Minister Miguel D’Escoto said the agreement marks “the beginning of a new push that will bring us to total compliance” with the peace plan, approved by the region’s presidents in Guatemala City.

He said the plan is similar to one that was proposed jointly by the United Nations and the Organization of American States in November, 1987. That measure was rejected by Honduras, the nation most closely associated with the Central American policies of the Reagan Administration.

Foreign Minister Ricardo Acevedo Peralta of El Salvador said the peacekeepers would be authorized to go anywhere they wished on short notice to investigate charges of violations of the pact.

If enforced to the letter, the agreement would ban the use of bases in Honduras or Costa Rica by the U.S.-backed Contras opposing Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. It also would prohibit leftist Salvadoran rebels from using cross-border bases to attack the U.S.-backed government of El Salvador.

D’Escoto said the five nations had already sounded out West Germany, Spain and Canada and determined that they were willing to participate in the force.

The foreign ministers said Perez de Cuellar would work out the details of the proposal, a process that could take about a month.

After agreeing on a verification plan for the security provisions of the accord, the foreign ministers plan to meet today to discuss methods of enforcing the human rights provisions, which require free elections and other economic, social and cultural rights.