Word: salvadors
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This policy began to evolve in December, when Richard Allen and Jeane Kirkpatrick, two Reagan advisers with a keen interest in Latin America, told the President-elect that El Salvador would likely be his first testing ground...
That month Allen met with the leader of the country's ruling military-civilian junta, Jose Napoleon Duarte, at Reagan transition headquarters in Washington. They discussed the possibility of increasing the U.S. aid to El Salvador that had been initiated in the waning days of the Carter Administration...
Secretary of State Alexander Haig took the lead in discussions about El Salvador after the new Administration was inaugurated. This was the place to try to halt Soviet adventurism, he argued. Some White House advisers-including top Aides James Baker and Edwin Meese-were initially reluctant to initiate a highly visible foreign policy thrust while the Administration was trying to focus attention on its economic program. But they succumbed to the argument, put by one top presidential aide: "You can't abdicate the conduct of foreign policy no matter what the domestic priorities...
...Reagan Administration immediately decided to scrap the Carter policy of linking aid to El Salvador to the elimination of human rights abuses and to progress on land reforms promised by the junta. Instead, another form of linkage was instituted: Reagan and Haig publicly emphasized that since Cuba and other Soviet clients were supporting the rebels, the guerrilla war in El Salvador was not a local affair but part of a larger East-West struggle...
...pleased with the direction El Salvador has taken as a foreign policy issue...