Central America a Pounding Fist, a Firm Warning

By Jill Smolowe

Ronald Reagan showed last week that beneath his affable facade beats the heart of an exasperated politician. At a meeting at the White House, the President once more called upon a group of Republican legislators to support his Administration's request for aid to the Nicaraguan rebels, known as the contras. Even as he spoke, Reagan knew that despite his pleas, Congress would not pass a military-aid bill for the rebels. The President reportedly pounded his fist on the table.* "We have got to get where we can run a foreign policy without a committee of 535 telling us what we can do," he declared.

The sentiment was echoed later by Secretary of State George Shultz, who warned that if Congress failed to approve an aid package for the contras, the U.S. eventually would face "an agonizing choice about the use of American combat troops" in Central America. It was one of Shultz's toughest statements to date on the possibility of military intervention.

But legislative obstacles were only the start of Reagan's Central American headaches last week. In Honduras, army efforts to move the contras out of camps near the Nicaraguan border threatened to impede the rebels' efforts to weaken Nicaragua's Marxist-led Sandinista government. In Nicaragua, Sandinista officials irritated Washington both by seeking to set up their own talks with Honduras and by announcing an oil deal with the Soviet Union. In Costa Rica, the Reagan Administration came under increasing criticism for sending Green Berets to a base

125 miles from San Jose to train hundreds of civil guardsmen. The only bright spot was El Salvador, where captured documents gave backing to Administration claims that Salvadoran leftist guerrillas have strong ties to Nicaragua and the Soviet bloc.

The Administration was particularly annoyed by Honduran moves to dislodge droves of contras from camps along the frontier with Nicaragua that the rebels have been occupying since mid-1981. The Hondurans are anxious to close the camps so that the Sandinistas, who this month made two incursions into the area, will have no excuse for further attack. It remained unclear last week where most of the estimated 15,000 rebels are now operating. The contras claimed that 12,000 of their troops have returned to Nicaragua. Sandinista officials insist that the rebels have retreated to areas farther inside Honduras, possibly to wait for new supplies. Either way, the Honduran army's effort, which included the occupation of Las Vegas, the main contra camp, reflected concerns about continuing to allow their country to be used as a staging ground for the rebels.

Washington officials blamed the Honduran jitters on Congress's April 24 refusal to approve $14 million in contra aid. Their argument is that Hondurans are questioning why they should risk their own security if the U.S. Congress is not willing to support the anti-Sandinista cause. A Honduran government official declared that his country is "paying for the difference of opinion between the President and Congress."

Hoping to quell this mounting unease, Reagan met last Tuesday in Washington with Honduran President Robert Suazo Cordova. After two sessions and lunch, the two leaders emerged on the White House lawn, where Reagan pledged to defend Honduras "against Communist aggression." Suazo said that Honduras had "received security guarantees from the United States." Despite the reassuring words, no new agreements were actually signed.

In Nicaragua, Defense Minister Humberto Ortega Saavedra's renewed calls for bilateral talks with Honduras were ostensibly aimed at relieving border tensions. Washington believes such conversations would run counter to the Contadora process, the regional effort to bring peace to Central America. The minister's brother, President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, concluded his 25-day, 14-country tour of Eastern and Western Europe with the announcement that Moscow had agreed to supply up to 90% of Nicaragua's oil needs. Since estimates are that the Soviet Union already provides some 75% to 90% of Nicaragua's consumption of 14,000 bbl. a day (Iran, Algeria and Libya supply the rest), a new promise of Soviet support was hardly a major revelation. But Ortega was full of bravado as he climbed out of an East German airplane onto the tarmac in Managua. "Our country is sovereign, not one more state of the United States," he said. "We don't need permission to go to Moscow, Paris, Brazil or Montevideo."

The Reagan Administration was also under fire from many Costa Ricans, including several Legislative Assembly deputies, who are incensed that 21 U.S. military trainers recently arrived to instruct 750 civil guardsmen. Both U.S. and Costa Rican officials say that the three-month program is nothing more than routine police training, and insist that Costa Rica's neutral status (the country has no armed forces) will not be affected. But many in Costa Rica fear that the U.S. presence might signal the first step toward forming an army.

There was some comfort for the Reagan Administration in El Salvador, where the government last week revealed documents that, if authentic, back Washington's charges of strong leftist Salvadoran guerrilla ties to the Soviet bloc and Nicaragua. The papers indicate that several guerrillas have attended military-training courses in the Soviet Union, Viet Nam, East Germany and Bulgaria. The letters, diaries and other documents also suggest that relations between the Salvadoran rebels and the Sandinistas have been strained at times, particularly in the months following the 1983 U.S. invasion of Grenada. The papers, said one U.S. official, "tend to confirm rather than reveal." After Reagan's troublesome week, it was at least a small victory.

FOOTNOTE: *Later, when he had calmed down, the President quipped that he had only been swatting a fly.

With reporting by June Erlick/Managua and William Stewart/Washington