PUZZLING FRIENDS, PLEASING ENEMIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00806R000100670030-4
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: September 8, 2010
• Sequence Number: 30
• Publication Date: May 17, 1985
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/08 :CIA-R
ARTICLE ~IPPEARED '~~ ~~~~~
WASHINGTON TIMES
17 May 1985
Puzzling friends,
'pleasin enemies
_g
' Nicaragua can't fairly be called a banana repub-
lic any longer.
It still has the bananas, but it's even less a repub-
1#c today than it was.
- Even the American friends of the Sandinistas
concede that. So it's fashionable now, particularly
aZnong the Americans with shame enough not to
praise the Sandinistas any longer, to poke fun at the
notion that "tiny Nicaragua" poses any kind of
threat to the "big" and "powerful" United States.
William Casey the director of the CIA argues ' "
this mornin to The Times that size has nothing to
o wit t o size s t e t rear.
?'The,Soviet Union and Cuba have established and
are consolidating a beachhead on the American
continent," says Mr. Casey, "[and] are putting hun-
dreds of millions of dollars worth of military
equipment into it, and have begun to use it as a
launching pad to carry their style of aggressive
subversion into the rest of Central America and
elsewhere in Latin America. '
Nicaragua, in this view, is fast becoming to Cen-
tral America what Beirut is to the Middle East, a '
focus of international terrorists who are in the
employ; whether paid in cash or in kind, of those
who plot in faraway capitals in the name of a cru-
elly intolerant and graceless Marxist gospel.
_Nicaragua, with the kind of military resources
that Mexico onh~ dreams of, dreams of the '
dz~ when it can walk through Costa Rica which has
tto army to Panama:' says the director of he C`tA
`and [then) Cuba can threaten our vital sea lanes in
~e Zr rri can"' .
? ~ A child's knowledge of geography is enough to `~~. -: ~~~
fathom what comes next. Only yesterday, James A. ".
Belly, as assistant secretary of defense, told a -
House subcommittee that the Soviet Union had
enlarged their naval base at Cam Ranh Bay in _
South Vietnam -that's the one we built and left
behind for them - so that it is now the largest
Soviet base outside the Soviet Union.
: This, said Mr. Kelly, dramatically increases the
threat against U.S. forces in the Pacific, South
China Sea and Indian Ocean. Once the Soviets con-
ti?ol the sea lanes and the canals, through which
everything passes east and west, what's left? Even
Z`ip O'Neill's Aunt Eunice, the Maryknoll nun
who taught the speaker as much as he knows about
central America, knows the answer to that one.
The obstacle to Sandinista consolidation -and
the establishment of the Marxist base in Central
America - is the Nicaraguan resistance. The resis-
tance $111 CaS2V SBV~ "enCO iraoPS thr+ Prnc;n v
fictive suvport for the Sandinistas by creating
uncertatnues about the future of the reeim ? by
cnaiien m tts claims of olitical le itimac and b
giving hove to leaders o the onnosition :'
? The man who learned this better than most is
Jose Napoleon Duarte, the president of El Salvador,
who came to dinner last night at The Times. He
believes that democracy has grown in his country
almost -almost - to the point that it is irrevers-
ible. Some appetites, once whetted, must be sat-
isfied.
Three years ago, he said, the Sandinista
government in Nicaragua was the."Cinderella" of
the Marxist world -idealized, idolized, and worthy
to be imitated. The democratic movecnent in his
own country was dismissed as inconsequential.
But now, he thinks, the Sandinistas are
increasingly discredited, while his own government
grows in the respect, if not always the esteem, of
-'democratic governments everywhere.
' He agreed to talk to the guerrillas in his country,
he says, because as a small-d democrat he
"must respect the thinking of everyone:' But he
does not believe the Communists have any interest
at all in a democratic solution: "The Communists
give no chance to anyone." - ~---
' The Communists in El Salvador have another
hand to play. By talking, they are gaining time -
time enough, perhaps, to win in the L'.S. Congress
what they have not won on the field of battle.
M:: Duarte concedes that such casual disregard
by Americans for their interests - he is too kind to
say it just this way - is a puzzle to their friends in
Latin America.
But as long as the battleground on Capitol Hill is
the friendly one, this is where the fighting is Iikely
to stay.
Wesley Pruden is managing editor of The Times.
Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/09/08 :CIA-RDP90-008068000100670030-4