Central America Captain Ahab vs. Moby Dick

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

It is not true that Ronald Reagan and Daniel Ortega Saavedra have nothing in common. Both hold passionate beliefs. They just happen to believe exactly opposite things, as two emotional speeches demonstrated anew last week. "I make a solemn vow," Reagan promised at an Organization of American States (OAS) meeting in Washington. "As long as there is breath in this body, I will speak and work, strive and struggle for the cause of the Nicaraguan freedom fighters." Specifically, Reagan pledged, he will fight for $270 million in renewed military and humanitarian aid to the contras to enable them to continue battling the Sandinista regime. The next day, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly, the Nicaraguan leader ridiculed Reagan's talk. "President Reagan posed as a great judge of the peoples of the world," said Ortega. "Who gave him such power?"

Despite his confident tone, Reagan will find it difficult to deliver on his word. So long as Central Americans continue trying to find compromise solutions to the region's guerrilla wars, his chances of persuading Capitol Hill to vote more arms for the contras are virtually zero. Said House Speaker Jim Wright: "I really don't believe there is any disposition in Congress to pass military money at the time when we are negotiating for peace."

At most, the legislators might authorize continued humanitarian aid (food, clothing, medical supplies), and that might enable the contras to stay in the field as an organized force. Though supporters of the contras argue that only the prospect of continued fighting will keep the Sandinistas at the bargaining table, Wright and his colleagues seemed intent on doing nothing that would jeopardize the Central American peace process.

The search for peace continued last week. In El Salvador, President Jose Napoleon Duarte met with representatives of Marxist-led guerrillas; they failed to sign a cease-fire but agreed to keep talking. More surprising, negotiators for the Guatemalan government and leftist rebels conferred in Madrid. They issued a terse statement claiming, "Both sides consider that the climate of the talks was satisfactory." That was the first hint that either side might be willing to settle a brutal guerrilla war that has claimed 30,000 lives in the past 16 years.

In Nicaragua, the Sandinistas declared a unilateral cease-fire in three regions and pulled their troops out of those areas -- a mostly symbolic move, since the Sandinistas exercised next to no control there. In Managua, Ortega opened discussions with unarmed opposition groups across the political spectrum. These moves are called for in the pact signed by five Central American Presidents, including Ortega, in early August. Under that agreement, cease-fires are to take effect in all countries by Nov. 5, foreign aid to guerrilla movements must cease, and the rebels are to be offered a peaceful role in the political life of newly democratized regimes. Though everlasting peace is not likely to descend on Central America come Nov. 6, the various initiatives will probably show enough progress to strengthen congressional resolve not to resume military aid to the contras that expired Sept. 30.

That would greatly endanger Reagan's strategy, which depends almost entirely on maintaining the guerrillas as a force capable of exerting pressure on the Sandinistas. The contras, Reagan implied in his OAS speech, are needed as "insurance" against Sandinista backsliding from the small democratic reforms that they have already instituted, including reopening the newspaper La Prensa.

Reagan ticked off conditions that Nicaragua must meet before Washington could encourage the contras to lay down their arms: complete freedom of the press and of worship; freedom for all shades of opposition to organize and run for office; liberty for all political prisoners. These demands go well beyond conditions the U.S. has tried to press on any other nation. Republican Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon observed that Reagan's requirement "isn't a standard we apply to Albania or China" -- nations with which the U.S. nevertheless does business. Says Wayne Smith, a former U.S. diplomat and sharp critic of the Administration: "The Sandinistas are Reagan's MobyDick, and he is their Captain Ahab."

For all his derisive words last week, Ortega repeatedly offered to open direct negotiations with the U.S. Some State Department officials believe Reagan should take him up on it. They think that with Nicaragua under pressure to carry out the peace plan and get Washington to call off the contra war, the U.S. could strike a deal for reduction of Soviet aid and Cuban military advisers to Nicaragua, as well as other steps guaranteeing that Nicaragua will not become the Soviet-Cuban military base that Reagan fears.

But the Administration insists Ortega must negotiate not with Washington but with the contras. Ortega just as adamantly refuses to meet with the contras' political leaders; the furthest he will go at the moment is to offer to discuss cease-fire terms and amnesty with contra military commanders in the field.

The worst outcome for the U.S. in Nicaragua would be that the contras would wither away as more and more rebels accepted a Sandinista amnesty, and that the Sandinistas would then repeal the few steps they have taken toward democracy. The U.S. would thus be left to deal with a Marxist dictatorship that had cemented itself in power. There is a real danger that by proposing military aid to the contras, which Congress is almost certain to refuse, and by holding out for pure democracy in Nicaragua, Reagan will isolate the U.S. from peace negotiations that are likely to go forward -- with or without Washington. That in turn could increase the prospect of the worst-case scenario coming true.

With reporting by John Borrell/San Salvador and Barrett Seaman/Washington