Word: guatemala
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...crowd swept to its feet as shouts of "Bravo! Bravo!" echoed through the chamber. That exuberant welcome was a measure of the respect that Arias has won on Capitol Hill for the peace plan conceived by him and signed two months ago by five Central American Presidents in Guatemala City. Arias' 30-minute address to the informal joint gathering of Congress was teeming with platitudes and somewhat short of substance, but hardly anyone could fault his message. Said the Costa Rican: "Let us restore faith in dialogue and give peace a chance...
Meanwhile the peace cavalcade proceeded in fits and starts. Contra leaders gathered in Guatemala City to examine their own future. In an unexpected gesture of goodwill, they released 80 Sandinista prisoners of war at an airfield in Costa Rica, 30 miles from the Nicaraguan border. Several days earlier, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega Saavedra pardoned 16 Central Americans, none of them Nicaraguans, who had been imprisoned for rebel activity...
Still, there was cause to worry that the cease-fire scheduled for Nov. 7 would not hold. Since the signing of the Guatemala accord, the five Presidents have had little direct contact. The first meeting of the group's foreign ministers ended in chaos, and the second, held last week in Managua, resulted in little progress. Already there is talk of a "one-up, one-down" outcome, meaning that the provisions of the plan may prove effective in Nicaragua but not in El Salvador, or vice versa...
...Ambassador Lewis Tambs that the contras could no longer use a U.S.-built airstrip in northern Costa Rica, near the Nicaraguan border. When the order was ignored, Arias became more determined. A year later he unveiled a peace proposal that became the foundation for the accord adopted in Guatemala City. "Reagan believes that our plan has loopholes, and I accept that it might," Arias says. "No human work is perfect. But now the ball is in the court of the Central Americans...
That is not quite true. To some who support the Guatemala accord, Reagan's request for $270 million in contra aid before the Nov. 7 cease-fire seems not so much a way to pressure the Sandinistas as a ploy to sabotage Arias' proposal. Arias remains hopeful. "I am obliged to be an optimist," he says. "I really hope that the Americans will give us the opportunity until Nov. 7 to show that we have the will to find peace in Central America." Arias will need all his considerable optimism, charm and determination to persuade the White House that...