PEACE PLAN WHERE DOES IT STAND?

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00965R000302360002-9
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 25, 2012
• Sequence Number: 2
• Publication Date: March 1, 1988
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302360002-9
CENTRAL AMERICAN
PEACE PLAN
Where Does It Stand?
By Georgie Anne Geyer
N EARLY August 1979,
barely days after Sandi-
nista soldiers had marched
triumphantly over Nica-
ragua. Tomas Borge met
in the lobby of Managua's
Intercontinental Hotel
with a small group of lead-
ing Latin American diplo-
mats. Borge. the hardest-line member
of the hardest-line Marxist group of the
Sandinistas, already was the powerful
minister of the interior. The conversa-
tion was historic. In talking to the tense
little group. Borge outlined the Sandi-
nistas' plan to revolutionize all of Latin
America?but to do it gradually, so that
few people would be alarmed.
"The fewer problems we have, the
more Latin America will be attracted to
us." he said in a low, husky voice. "The
more problems we have, the less." He
would not shoot all the old Somocistas,
he said, because he did "not want to
turn the rest of the Latin American revo-
lution against us."
Exactly eight years later, in August
1987. a Central American Peace Plan
vas put into effect. The roar of diplo-
matic trumpets heralded the plan as
being one that would "democratize"
and liberalize Nicaragua. and turn off
that "Latin American revolution" cen-
tered in Managua. The plan's patron
and designer. Costa Rican President
Oscar .Aria, vas almost immediately
revkarded for it with a prestigious Nobel
Peace Prize. The plan also led almost
immediately to a U.S. freeze on funds
Foreign correspondent and syndicated
columnist Georgie Anne Ge?er has
ccritten extensivelx on Central America
If it has done
anything at all,
the Arias Plan
has clarified
the totalitarian
intent of the
Sandinistas.
??????????????
for the approximately 15.000 anti-San-
dinista Contras fighting on Nicaragua's
northern borders.
But gnawing questions persist in
practical minds. Is it possible that a
Marxist government, clearly bent upon
the kind of "revolution without borders"
that Borge openly outlined in 1979. is
willing to live and let live where demo-
cratic neighbors are concerned? What is
really happening in this all-important
area of the world, which presents
America with its first neighborhood
war, fueled by an antithetical and
antagonistic outside ideology.?
Crucial, but not widely known. is
the fact that Arias and the presidents
of Guatemala. Honduras and El Sal-
ador took action in August 1987
because all of them were convinced.
and even terrified, that the United
States was not going to move?that
Congress vvould not support the Con-
tras an more, thus leaving all of Cen-
tral America vulnerable to the Sandinis-
tas huge army.
So Arias devised a cunning 11-point
plan calling for national reconciliation
in all countries, for democratization
and plurality, for free elections, for the
Nemweek
Time
U.S. News & World Report
ktfalti coal hg se A/ 414010,f
Date "Memjq
cessation of aid to "irregular- force,.
and for commitments not to allo&.
national territories to be used for the
destabilization of other governments
The U.S. administration immediately
called the plan "flawed," because none
of the 11 points called for the removal
of egregiously large outside military
forces?such as the Cubans. Soviets
and Bulgarians?from Nicaragua.
Still, at first, it looked even to skep-
tics as though the plan might work, if
only because the Sandinistas had so
exhausted their land that they might be
forced to change. Meanwhile. Salva-
doran Christian Democratic President
Jose Napoleon Duarte immediately
opened goodwilhalks with his own
Marxist guerrillas, and Guatemala
started to do the same. Honduras, from
which the Contras launch their attacks,
began to talk about closing down
Contra camps.
THE Sandinistas already had set up a
rigid single-party system, in which
the army serves the party and not
the state, and in which the remaining
"free-enterprise- businesses are strin-
gently controlled by the state. But in
the fall of 1987. many North Americans
and Central Americans wanted to
believe that the Sandinistas would turn
out to be a kind of social-democratic
left if only given the chance.
And the Sandinistas. at least in the
beginning, seemed to begin to move
toy- ard democracy. They allowed the
Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa to
reopen. Radio Catolica to rebroadcast
and some exiles to return. But in the
end, the swallows of peace did not
return to Capistrano after all, as it
became increasingly obvious that these
changes were easily reversible.
Even as Anas was returning from the
Nobel Peace Pnze ceremony in Oslo. a
Contnued
Page a .
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302360002-9
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302360002-9
NOT FOOLED - The Contras, knowing
that the Sandinistas will not abide by the
peace plan, hare continued to request
military sicl from the United States.
hi h-level Nicara uan defector-Ma ? CO
Ro er Miranda. the leadin aide to San-
dinista e ense mister urn erto bot
with rte a washm his revelationsrevelations. The Sandini
regime intended to form a 600.000-
_
min army. e said. n a country of only
3 5-million people. that would mean
that roughly o
democratic nations of Central Americo
launched the peace plan when they became
T
HE
convinced that the United States was no
longer going to support the Contras.
Nlinister Humberto Ortega uasted little
time in confirming Miranda's stor \ - There are economic problems as
v.hich. in etteL:t. meant that tin\ and skell. The U.S. dollar exchange rate tor
tormeriy in,:onsequential Nicaragua Nicaraguan cordobas was 14 lL r' l g i)n
had plans to become the SeCOnd-rM),/- a 60-uord telegram sent from Nica-
1979i nou it is 30.000 to 1. A yeaai.
rnditarized country in the area. atter ragua to Panama cost $635.
Cuba And ?A hen his brother. President
Daniel Ortega. om e t h i n gI has clarified
as nothing
tried to play doss n Hum- The peace plan, then. has done
berm() -. statement5. he only made it has before. the complete totalitarian
N -t .
uorse Es en if there u ere election,. intent of the Sandinistas. There really is
Ortega said. in the hypothetical es ent no room for mystery any more. What.
that the Sandinistas lost, what they then. comes next?
would gi%e up ?'skould be the govern- The Contras. as imperfect as they
ment. bur not the power.- In short. any are, have provided several invaluable
wants services, and Congress should continue
idea that Sandinista Nicaragua
peace w oh its neighbors under any to provide aid. The Contras have pres-
pe sured the Ortega brothers to make at
nv incingly disproved
ace plan could not have been more . least a semblance of change. if not real
'The Soviet role in Nicaragua remains change. Most important. the Contras
able interview.
h strange anfin th
d ominous. In a remark- have protected other L ?
every two male
the country would be in some form
military service.
Ile also said that the Sandinis
MiG5 that the weroin2 0 Sov
Orteta_ brothers had
million in foreign bank-accounts. a
that in case of an American invasio
the Sandinistas were going to region
ize the conffict. even going so far as
bomb Costa Rica in order to crea
chaos and insurrection.
Now, there is something odd about
the Sandinistas, and it has to do with
the fact that they really mean what they
say -and?that far from caring about
economic development for their peo-
ple, what they really enjoy is strutting
in military glory across the world stage.
What s more, men such as Borge are
serious men who studied Marxism-
embraced it.
Leninism in the '50s and deliberately
Every time Congress is just about to
believe that the Sandinistas really are
social democrats at heart, they rein-
force what Borge said in 1979. So it
was with Miranda's revelations. which
were so dramatic that they seemed
questionable to many people. Defense
second day of the countries from Sandinista subversion
merican
American-Soviet summit last December by turning the Sandinistas' expan-
President Reagan told four reporters sionist revolutionary impulses inward.
Sov let leader 'vf.
that he had discussed Nicaragua with But in the long mil th S ? ?
, al Gorbachev. are not going to go away. No one should
n inistas
s in pointing out to him the similarities with underestimate the possibility of a brief
of Afghanistan in terms of a Soviet with 'American invasion to get the wildly
drawal. But as a matter of fact. even at unpopular Sandinistas out. That might
tas that momeiii7EFTEcrig-74----, ?ere mcreas- even come in this President's last term,
let mg military an_cre-c-onomic aid-to Nica- for what does he have to lose now?
SI ra_g_Lia. The stories about the Soviet cut: As Judge William Clark once said
nd back on oilian
sksi-ts to the S - andi about Reagan and his particular passion
n. ni g-a-s in the s rin of 198"-Tii?____Ir2.,_ed_._o_ut about Nicaragua, "You must under.
al. to be important -c-1-1-s'rr?qorm___qtion. stand that Nicaragua is the key to every-
corn.
OWS Co-
mun
teism to take hold in this hemis-
phere. he cannot fight it anywhere."
to Meanwhile the s began new thing for him for h
offensives. despite America's ambiva-
lence about providing further aid, and
the mood of ordinary Nicaraguans
rapidly went from passive anger to des-
perate rage Even The .Veli Ybrk Timer.
which has tended to support the Sandi-
nistas. said in a front-page story. "Pub-
lic art and gosernment billboards do
not express the exhaustion apathy and
bitterness,that appear to affect the
Nicaraguan people deeply, and to hate
made this holiday season heass with
suffering and poserts today, eight
years later the Sandinistas are on the
defensise The Nicaraguan economy
has Crumbled The armed challenge
from the American-backed Contras is
sharpening. and popular support for the
government appears to have declined
markedly. although there appears to be
no immediate threat to the Sandinistas'
hold on posser
.6?1 ?n
Declassified and Approved For Release 2012/09/25: CIA-RDP90-00965R000302360002-9