"Things Are Moving"

By William E. Smith

As the U.S. flexes its muscles, Reagan's envoy meets a Salvadoran rebel

Addressing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee late last week, Secretary of State George Shultz sought to allay congressional fears that the Reagan Administration was recklessly risking war by scheduling large-scale military maneuvers in Central America. If U.S. forces are attacked at any time during the six-month-long maneuvers, Shultz declared, "our forces will defend themselves but they will withdraw." He added, "We have no intent to engage anyone actively."

Moreover, Shultz insisted, the Administration's muscle flexing was beginning to pay off. Until recently, said the Secretary, there had been "no incentive" for the Sandinistas, the Salvadoran guerrillas, the Cubans or the Soviets to believe that "anything credible" stood in the way of the "imposition of Communist rule by armed force in El Salvador and the rest of Central America." Now, said Shultz, these countries could clearly see that "a victory by the far left through force is not in the cards."

That the Administration meant business had been demonstrated a few days earlier by an incident at sea 50 miles off the Pacific coast of Nicaragua. A U.S. guided-missile destroyer, the Lynde McCormick, drew to within a mile of the Aleksandr Ulyanov, a Soviet cargo ship bound for Nicaragua. Four days earlier, President Reagan had said at a press conference that the freighter was carrying helicopters to the Sandinistas. Over his ship's radio, the captain of the U.S. destroyer contacted the Soviet skipper and asked him what his cargo was and where he was headed. The Russian replied that he was taking trucks and other merchandise to the Nicaraguan port of Corinto.

That ended the encounter, which the Pentagon later described as "routine." But the destroyer continued to follow the freighter to the limit of Nicaragua's territorial waters, twelve miles from the coast. Even as the Administration proceeded with plans for the military exercises, which will involve 19 naval vessels and as many as 5,000 U.S. servicemen at sea and in Honduras, it was displaying increasingly overt interest in finding a diplomatic solution to the Central American dilemma. Last week, after elaborate planning, U.S. Special Envoy Richard Stone met secretly with Ruben Zamora, 40, a leader of the Democratic Revolutionary Front, which represents the five guerrilla organizations that are fighting under a joint banner in El Salvador. In the past, the U.S. had refused to deal directly with the Salvadoran guerrillas, arguing that to do so would undermine the legitimacy of the U.S.-supported government in El Salvador.

Stone tried but failed to meet with Salvadoran rebels in Costa Rica last month. This time the successful go-between was Colombian President Belisario Betancur Cuartas. The setting was the austerely modern living room of the presidential palace in Bogota. Betancur first greeted Stone, then introduced him to Zamora and withdrew from the room. What the two men said during the next 90 minutes is not known, but both sides subsequently hinted that another meeting, involving several other Salvadoran leftist leaders, may take place later this month.

The Reagan Administration has gone to some length to emphasize that it was not "negotiating" with the guerrillas but merely trying to talk them into participating in the forthcoming Salvadoran elections, which are now scheduled for early 1984. After the meeting, Zamora made it clear that the guerrillas had not changed their minds about boycotting the elections because they do not trust the Magana government to run them fairly or to be able to ensure the safety of leftist candidates. To participate in elections under present conditions in El Salvador, he declared, "would be to commit suicide." Nonetheless, Zamora said he regarded the talks with Stone as "a small step but a step in the right direction." He added: "It seems to us that if we can keep the flame of negotiations alive, this could be a deterrent against those people in the [Reagan] Administration who want to treat Central America as if they were in the 19th century."

After the Bogota meeting, Stone flew to El Salvador for discussions with Salvadoran President Alvaro Magana and other government leaders. Francisco Quinonez, head of the Peace Commission that was created last year with the specific mission of trying to bring the left into the political process, informed Stone that there had already been contacts between his group and the guerrillas.

Stone's next negotiating stop was Nicaragua, where he held a two-hour talk with Junta Coordinator Daniel Ortega Saavedra and Foreign Minister Miguel d'Escoto. Ortega repeated his recent call for a nonaggression pact between his country and Honduras and for a general freeze on outside military aid to all the countries of the region. A U.S. participant later described the talks as "serious and non-polemical." Stone gained the impression that the Nicaraguan leaders seemed less rigid than in the past, possibly because of their rising concern over U.S. military visibility.

The latest Stone mission enabled the Reagan Administration to claim that its Central America policy was beginning to show some results. Shultz told congressional leaders that "things are moving in a reasonably positive way." He mentioned not only the Stone-Zamora meeting but the latest efforts of the Contadora group, which consists of Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Venezuela. Last month the Presidents of those nations offered a ten-point peace plan aimed at defusing the military crisis. Next day Nicaragua's Ortega offered a strikingly similar plan, which, for the first time, acknowledged the regional nature of the problem. Until then, the Sandinistas had argued that their only problems were bilateral, with neighboring Honduras and with the U.S. Cuban President Fidel Castro similarly sought to take advantage of the Contadora initiative at the time by proposing negotiations to withdraw all foreign military advisers from the region. Under prodding from some congressional critics last week, Shultz said that he would look into the Cuban overture.

Whether the Administration's assurances had changed the minds of many skeptical Senators and Congressmen was doubtful. Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker acknowledged that the situation in Central America was improving "marginally." Democrat Michael Barnes, chairman of the House's Western Hemisphere Affairs Subcommittee, concluded, "There appears to be real ambivalence in the Administration. There are two different views, with the moderates favoring negotiation and the hard-liners advocating a military solution. As a result, they don't have a policy." Three Democrats, Senators Edward Kennedy and Gary Hart and Massachusetts Congressman Edward Markey, introduced a bill requiring the Government to get explicit congressional authorization before sending any combat troops into Central America. The bill, which has no serious chance of passage, would require congressional approval even for maneuvers such as the ones that are currently planned. Said Kennedy: "The President is playing with matches in Central America, and Congress must not permit him to light the spark that provokes the incident that starts the war." The next test of congressional sentiment will come in the fall when Congress must vote on whether to continue covert U.S. funding for the Nicaraguan contra guerrillas who are fighting the Sandinistas.

In the meantime, the Pentagon was proceeding with its elaborate plans for Big Pine II, as the maneuvers in the Central American region are designated. General Paul Gorman, chief of the Panama-based U.S. Southern Command, confirmed last week that the exercises will include an amphibious landing by 1,800 U.S. Marines and 600 to 800 troops from the Honduran 4th Battalion on the northern coasts of Honduras in November. That will be followed by a ten-day mock counterinsurgency operation aimed at "finding and rooting out" guerrillas in the coastal regions. Some of these maneuvers will take place in the narrow section of Honduras that borders on Nicaragua and El Salvador, and through which some of the arms from the Sandinistas to the Salvadoran rebels reportedly have been moving. Meanwhile, a carrier battle group headed by the U.S.S. Ranger is already on station in the Pacific off El Salvador. The President of Panama and several Cabinet ministers from Honduras and Guatemala accepted U.S. invitations to visit the Ranger last week.

As the U.S. election year approaches, the Administration will be hard pressed to win public support for its policy. The political risks are high. Opinion polls have shown repeatedly that the American public does not want U.S. troops to become involved in the fighting in Central America. At the same time, Reagan cannot afford to be seen to have "lost" Central America. The Administration will be obliged to do everything possible to appear reasonable and open to a political solution even as it continues to apply constructive military pressure.

--By William E. Smith.

Reported by Timothy Loughran/Managua and Gregory H. Wierzynski/Washington

With reporting by Timothy Loughran, Gregory H. Wierzynski This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.