Editorials
Crimping the accords W e do not claim the right to order the politics of Nicaragua. That is for the Nicaraguan people to decide." President George Bush's statement last month announcing bipar-...
...But finally, oversight will never be enough...
...By accepting the legitimacy of Nicaragua's right to self-determination, the administration appears to have repudiated the doctrine of using force to overthrow the Sandinistas...
...It recently freed the majority of its political prisoners, offered cooperation in international drug-interdiction efforts-specifically with the United States-and has gradually but steadily enlarged the scope of political freedoms in the country...
...policy...
...A carrot-and-stick policy is a positive advancement over the stick alone, but it carries no guarantee that U.S...
...In fact, Washington appears more irked than edified by the growing regional solidarity in Central America, which initiates measures on its own without prior approval from the U.S...
...policy interests, but it subtly contradicts the administration's high-sounding praise for the Esquipulas II accords...
...It strengthens the military, further compromising long-term prospects for genuine democratic rule in the region, which, after all, is what the Reagan and Bush administrations have professed to be the goal of U.S...
...The Nicaraguan government has shown considerable flexibility under the pressures of Esquipulas II...
...The administration's promise to report regularly has a familiar leaden ring: previous promises and constraints have proved ineffective...
...What is needed in Washington is not a policy that, whatever its apparent novelty, maintains the crimped and self-absorbed policies of the past, but one that finally begins to respect the interests and cultures of the Central American countries, to welcome their regional solidarity and cooperation, and to see them as equal and independent partners in a larger endeavor at building democratic and prosperous societies...
...His plan may seem reasonable in light of longstanding U.S...
...Most recently, Nicaragua proposed twenty-nine reform amendments to its national electoral law in preparation for the upcoming February 25, 1990 election...
...policy will evolve into a genuinely collaborative relationship with the Central American republics...
...For those who consider the management of the hemisphere's affairs their divinely-ordained preiesa-tive, such independence smacks of ingratitude...
...claims that the contras should not disband because there were no strict timetables to measure Nicaraguan compliance nor means for verification...
...But old habits die hard...
...While the Bush administration has urged some contra political leaders to return home to take part in the elections, why does it delay full repatriation if it genuinely believes that the ballot is as powerful as the bullet...
...The manner in which the U.S...
...Can anyone claim that democracy has been enhanced for the average Honduran by the overpowering intrusion of U.S...
...The settlement adopted by the five Central American presidents at Tesoro Beach, El Salvador in February, among other provisions, called for the closing of the contra bases in Honduras...
...The Nicaraguan government, on the other hand, has led the call for UN-directed inspection teams to monitor compliance of the Esquipulas II and Tesoro Beach accords in the region, belying U.S...
...military money and supplies into that country over the last five years...
...Washington's continued undermining of these initiatives of Central America's civilian leaders has an additional cost...
...Yet it is only those hard-won diplomatic initiatives that have finally produced some movement toward reconciliation and reconstruction in the region...
...For the first time Washington, speaking with one voice, has endorsed Esquipulas II, at least rhetorically...
...The bipartisan agreement with Congress makes it clear that the administration will continue to direct policy by its own lights, slightly more benign in packaging but substantively unchanged in perspective...
...The new amendments guarantee that political candidates will be able to share equal time on state-owned broadcasting facilities, that public financing will be granted to all the patties participating in the election, and that the use of government employees and property in conducting campaigns will be prohibited...
...It would be a critical failure if members of Congress, as a result of their March agreement with the administration, were lulled into silence and let down their guard in resolutely monitoring Mr...
...By drawing Congress into this policy, the administration has shown its desire to end another battle, the one on the Potomac, where mistrust and rpisuse have abounded for nearly a decade, reaching their nadir in the secret arms diversions of the Iran-contra affair...
...To have put such a period of waste and futility behind us would be an accomplishment of a high and useful order...
...wrenched the arm of Honduras last month to keep the contras in place, despite the hardships their presence have caused and despite President Jose Azcona's agreement at Tesoro Beach to repatriate them within three months, shows Washington's disregard for the Central Americans' initiatives...
...Perhaps we seem to be quibbling...
...President George Bush's statement last month announcing bipar- tisan agreement with Congress on Central American policy has the ring of a new start...
...Speaker of the House Jim Wright quickly announced that the agreement precludes any offensive military actions by the contras...
...Bush's unilateral decision to maintain 11,000 contras in Honduras as an independent fighting force through February 1990 echoes that unspoken claim...
...After all, the agreement does break new policy ground...
...Furthermore, the $4.5 million that will be spent each month to maintain the contras on Honduran soil (Gosta Rica, Guatemala, and El Salvador could not be persuaded to take them) is money that could have been spent to repatriate them now, settling them in their own homes, and money that could have been used to encourage their participation in Nicaragua's national elections next February...
...Bush's ongoing actions in the region...
...Although President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, the architect of the Central American peace initiatives, has acquiesced in the Bush plan, his senior aides have said that he preferred a policy of immediate ' resettlement...
...Of course, Washington has never admitted that it ever claimed such a right, even in its headiest Rambo days, though it has consistently acted as if it did...
...The opposition is calling for a number of other changes to be made before April 25, the date when all the reforms of the electoral law have to be completed...
...Specifically, the opposition is against the government's insistence that members of the armed forces be allowed to run for office and that only those Nicaraguans who return in person will be allowed to vote...
...This stipulation of the agreement must be kept under constant congressional and public scrutiny...
Vol. 116 • April 1989 • No. 8
