PERILOUS LATIN POLICY

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP90-00552R000707170010-0
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: July 23, 2010
• Sequence Number: 10
• Publication Date: May 2, 1983
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2010/07/23: CIA-RDP90-0
PRTICLE APP RED -'"'"
OA PAG
WASHINGTON - President Rea-
gan's speech to Congress last Wednes-
day signals his determination to pur-
sue the course-based on a disastrous
self-fulfilling prophecy - be has fol-
lowed in Central America since com-
ing to office. Instead of trying to con-
tain unrest in Nicaragua and El Salva-
dor, the Administration is apparently
going to continue to spread upheaval
throughout the region.
The Administration has made a
definitive break with the diplomatic
principles of respect for sovereignty,
territorial integrity and noninterven-
tion. Instead, it has directed its re-
sources toward strengthening the
Central American military and fight-
ing an ill-defined "Communist
threat" with huge Central Intelligence
Agency stations and large numbers of
military advisers. The result has been
to encourage precisely the threat that
the President hoped to stop.
To grasp why the Administration
sponsored an invasion of Nicaragua
from Honduras, look to El Salvador.
Many key foreign policy aides under-
stand that the brutal and corrupt Sal-
vadoran Government is falling apart
and that no amount of military assist-
ance will enable it to contain the revo-
lutionaries. Yet the White House
firmly rejects any direct parleys with
guerrillas. Instead, Washington is
determined to create an ill-starred,
region-wide military battle - hoping
in the end to negotiate a region-wide
solution on its own terms.
The campaign began in earnest this
spring when the Pentagon conducted
joint military exercises with Hon-
duras along the Honduran-Nicara-
guan frontier and the Honduran mili-
tary strongman, Gen. Gustavo Alva-
rez Martinez, announced that co-exist-
ence with Nicaragua was no longer
possible. By that time, several thou-
sand Nicaraguan counter-revolution-
aries, trained, armed and funded by
the C.I.A., occupied camps on the
Honduran side of the border. In early
March, these forces, known as con-
tras, invaded Nicaragua.
The true intent of the Administra-
tion, in supporting the contras, may
have been neither to overthrow the
Sandinists nor, as Mr. Reagan
claimed, to interdict the negligible*
trickle of arms from Nicaragua to El
Salvador. Rather, I believe, the inva-
sion ws part of a systematic plan to
provoke the Sandinists to ' cross the
Honduran border and attack the
counter-revolutionaries"base camps.
Honduran troops were poised to repel
the invaders and enter Nicaragua in
hot pursuit - creating a border war.
But even the hot-headed and inexperi-
NEW YORK TIMES
2 MAY 1983
Perilous Latin o is
By Robert E. White
ended Sandinists refused to fall into so Do the Reagan policy-makers truly
ob