Word: guatemala
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...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...
...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...
...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...
...Washington's distress, the Guatemala plan has almost totally eclipsed ) the Reagan Administration's version in public discussions. Three of the contras' six civilian directors embraced the accord last week, saying they would return to Nicaragua if conditions for a cease-fire scheduled for Nov. 7 were met. "We are prepared to give the plan a fair try," said Alfonso Robelo. "We won't put up any hurdles." Contra Military Commander Enrique Bermudez, however, asserted that the rebels would not lay down their weapons on Nov. 7, nor would they accept an amnesty offered by Ortega. During their meeting with...
...Nicaragua, Ortega went to unusual lengths to demonstrate his commitment to the Guatemala agreement. His boldest gesture was to name Miguel Cardinal Obando y Bravo, one of the Sandinistas' harshest critics, to a four-person commission that will oversee Managua's compliance with the plan. While State Department Spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley applauded Obando's appointment, she charged that "the Sandinistas have stacked the council in their favor...