Word: aid
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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...
...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...
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...
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...
...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...