Word: salvadors
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Just about the time John Paul II was preparing to leave for Central America, the Reagan Administration suddenly, and perhaps deliberately, began sounding alarm bells about El Salvador. Amid reports that leftist rebels were regaining the initiative in their struggle to topple the government, Ronald Reagan announced that he wanted $60 million in emergency military aid to El Salvador. The President was also considering an increase in the number of U.S. military advisers in the country, now informally set at a maximum of 55, together with an expansion of their duties. Finally, an American envoy was dispatched to El Salvador...
...aura of urgency recalled former Secretary of State Alexander Haig's controversial efforts to cast El Salvador's rebellion as a major East-West conflict. After Haig left office last summer, the Administration lowered the volume on its talk about Soviet subversion and the threat posed to the U.S. Yet officials made it clear last week that the Administration's basic view on Central America remained the same. Reagan depicted the Salvadoran conflict in its starkest ideological colors. "We believe that the government of El Salvador is on the front line in a battle that is really...
...offensive that enabled them to score several psychologically damaging victories by briefly holding the towns of Berlin, Corinto and Meanguera. Alarmed, Lieut. General Wallace H. Nutting, head of the U.S. Southern Command in Panama, sent National Security Adviser William P. Clark a report that the military situation in El Salvador was actually far worse than the U.S. embassy was saying...
...Administration's tone, however, is largely the work of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jeane Kirkpatrick. After a ten-day fact-finding trip to the region last month, she gave the President an exceptionally gloomy report. Backed by Clark, she repeated her longstanding conviction that if El Salvador fell to the rebels, the rest of Central America would be imperiled. Only an immediate infusion of aid to El Salvador, she told Reagan, could stave off the sound of falling dominoes...
Disturbed by Kirkpatrick's presentation, Reagan ordered a "full review" of Central American policy. His first priority was money. Instead of approving the request for $86.3 million in military aid to El Salvador for 1983 (up from $82 million spent in 1982), the last Congress had authorized only $26 million. According to the Administration, the Salvadorans have already spent the $26 million, primarily during the guerrilla offensive...