Apocalypse Soon

By Jill Smolowe

Smart U.S. politicians have long known the value of belonging to the "Three-I League," that elite union of travelers who have pressed the flesh in Ireland, Italy and Israel. Today the shrewd officeholder joins the "Triple-M Society," with its itinerary of foreign policy hot spots: Moscow, Manila and Managua. Lately the congressional congestion in Managua and vicinity has become particularly acute. No sooner had Robert Dole and four other Republican Senators checked out of the Nicaraguan capital last week, after some verbal sparring with President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, than Democratic Senator Tom Harkin checked in for a high-level chat. Meanwhile, Representative Jack Kemp and a delegation of 65 conservatives were traveling through Honduras, El Salvador and Costa Rica.

The blur of diplomacy left little doubt that Central America will be a major topic of debate in Congress this fall. Indeed, a struggle is already shaping up in the corridors of Washington over the very survival of the contras, the U.S.-supported guerrillas who are fighting the leftist Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. As if to launch the battle, President Reagan last week strongly repeated his support for the foundering contra cause, pledging that "we will not abandon our friends in Central America." Secretary of State George Shultz then went before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to plead for $270 million in new contra aid. The White House wants the funds to begin flowing shortly after the current aid expires Sept. 30 and to extend for 18 months, beyond the end of Reagan's term. Shultz did not specify how much of the money would be spent for weapons or what conditions might be attached to military funds. "We're doing what everyone says we should," he said. "We're consulting."

The Secretary had barely finished his testimony when the inevitable Democratic fireworks began. House Speaker Jim Wright of Texas, who recently co-sponsored with Reagan a now moribund Central American peace plan, promptly denounced the aid request as "inappropriate." Such aid, he charged, would frustrate the peace agreement signed in Guatemala City last month by five Central American Presidents, including Ortega, that calls for a regionwide cease-fire to take effect on Nov. 7. Any congressional move toward military aid right now, said Wright, "assumes the failure of the peace process, and I don't think it will fail." Wright hinted that he would use his powers as Speaker to keep the Reagan request off the House floor.

Throughout the five years that the Reagan Administration has made common cause with the rebels, the most decisive skirmishes have taken place outside the jungles of Central America. On Capitol Hill a wavering Congress, turning the aid spigot on and off, has sometimes seemed to the contras a more troublesome adversary than the 65,000 armed soldiers of the Sandinista People's Army. Now a homegrown peace plan hatched in the capitals of Central America has upstaged the war. Even some contra civilian leaders have caught peace fever, declaring their intention to re-enter politics in Nicaragua and leave those in fatigues to fret about the future of the struggle. "This could be it," concedes a senior contra official in Tegucigalpa, the Honduran capital. "If we are cut off by Washington now, we may be finished for good."

Both contra and U.S. officials say the rebels have sufficient funds and supplies in the pipeline to survive through the end of the year. Moreover, since U.S. aid began to flow again last October, the contras, armed with shoulder-fired Redeye missiles, have demonstrated an ability to sustain a war of attrition that could irritate the Sandinistas for years to come. But contra officials fear that a total shutdown of aid might propel many guerrillas to give up the fight and either head for the border or return home under a Nicaraguan amnesty program. Some of their leaders may even head the flight. In Washington, Rebel Leader Alfredo Cesar said last week that if U.S. aid dries up, contra officials may call a halt to all military actions, a decision they know would unsettle the Reagan Administration.

To avert a total aid drought, contra leaders are trying to keep open the nonmilitary pipeline. "We are prepared to agree to a cease-fire," says a senior contra official. "But not to an unconditional cease-fire." The Guatemala peace accord, however, does not compel the Sandinistas to negotiate directly with the rebels. At a meeting last week in Tegucigalpa, the contras' six civilian leaders accepted an offer of mediation from Costa Rican President Oscar Arias Sanchez, who pioneered the Guatemala plan. They have asked Arias to persuade the Sandinistas to accept a cease-fire that would enable the rebels to retain their arms and continue receiving food and medical supplies.

The contras have not specified how long the cease-fire would have to hold before they would be willing to give up the fight. But much like the Reagan- Wright peace plan, their proposal seems designed to force a refusal from the Sandinistas. "The big attraction of the Guatemala plan for the Sandinistas was that it left the contras high and dry," says a Western diplomat in Honduras. The contras hope that a Nicaraguan refusal will persuade the Honduran government to take a tougher stand on the accord.

Of the five signatories to the Guatemala accord, Honduras is rapidly emerging as the least enthusiastic. Last week Honduran President Jose Azcona Hoyo told visiting Congressman Kemp that he thought the peace accord did not preclude continued U.S. aid to the contras. "Hondurans would really like a regional peace agreement, but they also want to maintain good relations with the U.S., and right now the two seem mutually exclusive," says a Western diplomat in Tegucigalpa. "So they are hanging on to the U.S. trapeze, too frightened to let go and try to catch the Central American trapeze."

That ambivalence owes much to Honduran jitters that an end to hostilities in Nicaragua might send a tidal wave of contra refugees crashing across the border. Costa Rican officials believe that in the event of peace, the peasant soldiers in their country would return to Nicaragua, with only the former National Guardsmen of Dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle and upper-class Nicaraguans choosing to remain abroad. Honduran officials are less sanguine. As it is, they must cope with some 150,000 Nicaraguan refugees. They fear that most of the roughly 12,000 contras would want to set up shop in Honduras, perhaps even refusing to be disarmed by the 20,000-man Honduran army.

Hondurans contend that the contras are made in the U.S.A., so they are a Yanqui problem. "They were armed, trained and encouraged by the U.S.," says Gilberto Goldstein, an opposition assemblyman. "If the U.S. has no further use for them, it should at least take care of them. The problem shouldn't be dumped on us." Officially, Washington has no plans to deal with the contras if funding is irrevocably halted. But a U.S. official in the region says, "We have assured the Hondurans that we will take care of the problem when and if it arises."

U.S. assurances, however, seem to be counting for less and less these days. The signing of the Guatemala accord came about largely because of confused signals transmitted from Washington. Now most Central Americans feel that, one way or another, they must keep the peace momentum going. The increasing determination of U.S. allies to pursue their own interests without reference to Washington suggests that Reagan's friends have begun to see him as a lame duck. That perception comes on top of long-standing nervousness about the U.S. commitment to its allies, a fear fueled by the American example set in recent decades in Cuba, Viet Nam and Lebanon. "The U.S. has no long-term policies anywhere," says a contra official. "If the problem can't be solved quickly and easily, Americans lose interest and move on to something else."

By contrast, the Sandinistas, who waged an 18-year guerrilla war before marching triumphantly into Managua in 1979, are masters of tenacity. Seeing Reagan on the ropes, they have mounted a public relations campaign designed to convey goodwill. To demonstrate their commitment to the "democratization process" called for by the peace accord, Sandinista leaders have eased censorship rules and hinted that the leading opposition newspaper, La Prensa, may reopen before the Nov. 7 cease-fire. When Senator Dole passed through Managua two weeks ago, Ortega hotly debated with him in public for an hour. Moreover, a letter that Dole had written demanding the release of two jailed opposition leaders was published in the Sandinista press. Last week the two activists were turned over to Senator Harkin, a Democratic foe of contra aid, one week before their month-long jail terms were to expire.

The Sandinistas may yet make a mess of things, a talent for which they have demonstrated a remarkable flair. Just four days after a 1985 congressional vote against aid to the contras, for example, Ortega visited Moscow. His trip was deftly exploited by aid proponents two months later to obtain $27 million in humanitarian funds. Ortega seemed poised on the verge of self-destruction again last week as he coolly announced that on Nov. 7, the day the cease-fire is scheduled to begin, he will be in Moscow celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.

Surprisingly, the announcement stirred little notice in Washington. A Western diplomat in Nicaragua speculated that the Soviets had insisted on high-level representation at the anniversary festivities. "It wasn't an invitation, it was a summons," he said. Envoys elsewhere in the region observed that Ortega's announcement followed a Soviet decision to supply Nicaragua with an additional 100,000 tons of badly needed oil this year, and questioned whether recent strains between Moscow and Managua had been anything more than a propaganda ploy.

The Sandinistas and the contras are not the only ones who can derail the peace process. This week in El Salvador, President Jose Napoleon Duarte is scheduled to begin peace negotiations with the country's leftist guerrillas. But a dispute over whether the rebels must first put down their arms threatens to abort the talks. Arias, who has agreed to mediate, will undoubtedly struggle valiantly to pull the talks back on track. But if the plan stalls in El Salvador, it may be the beginning of the end for the Guatemala peace accord.

With reporting by John Borrell/Tegucigalpa, with other bureaus