Finally, Real Interest?

On its face the Central American peace proposal worked out by the Reagan Administration and congressional leaders is encouraging. It embodies much of the peace plan put forward by President Oscar Arias Sanchez of Costa Rica. Each plan would bring about a cease-fire between the contras and the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, each would end outside aid to both sides, each would pressure the Sandinistas toward a more open society. If there is in the end going to be a settlement, those are the elements it will contain.

The great question is whether the Reagan Administration is at last seriously interested in negotiation, or is instead hoping to trap its opponents in Congress into voting for continued contra aid by presenting an ostensibly reasonable plan it hopes and expects will fail.

The history is not encouraging. In the past the Administration has talked negotiation but pursued confrontation. President Reagan showed a single-minded determination to, as he once bluntly put it, make the Sandinistas say “Uncle.” The apparently popular appeal of the moist-eyed Lt. Col. Oliver L. North gave some in the Administration the notion that now was the time to push for more contra aid when the current $100 million runs out Sept. 30. Even now there is talk of asking Congress for another $150 million or $200 million, to last until the Reagan Administration leaves office--and leaves the mess to its successor. There is no evidence that the President has changed his mind about what he wants to do with the Sandinistas.

Even a State Department official conceded that the chances of the entire plan succeeding are “something less than 10%.” And the Administration and its opponents in Congress immediately began talking about what to do if it failed.

Yet the President’s circumstances have changed. Gone are the impetuous North, the ever-plotting William J. Casey, the devious Rear Adm. John M. Poindexter, the inexperienced Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan. In their place are former Republican Senate leader Howard H. Baker Jr. and national-security adviser Frank C. Carlucci. The new guys are experienced men who know how the world works, and in particular how Congress works. They are not the sort of men who regard compromise as synonymous with appeasement.

So it may be that circumstances may drag the President--so damaged by the Iran-contra affair, so evidently anxious to repair his reputation--into a stance more moderate than his gut would indicate. You can hope, anyhow. The first sign may come in the current meetings of the Central American presidents in Guatemala.