Gorbachev supports C. America status-quo

Scan page 12

12 SOCIALIST ACTION DECEMBER 1987 While world attention is focusing on the Reagan-Gorbachev arms negotiations, one aspect of U.S.-Soviet relations that has received relatively little media coverage is the issue of Central America. This does not mean, however, that top U.S. and Soviet policymakers are not attributing major importance to this topic.

On Oct. 29, for example, Elliot Abrams, the assistant secretary of State in charge of Latin American affairs, met in London with Yuri Pavlov, his Soviet counterpart, to "explore possibilities for seeking a settlement to the conflict in Central America." (La Jornada, Mexico City, Oct. 31)

What kind of settlement? Robert White, former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, offers an answer.

Speaking at a meeting of the CommonPost Office Box 404830 2-966-9619 Affordable photos, cartoons, caricatures and lustrations for the movement and the progressive pres wealth Club in San Francisco in early November, White said that the Soviet Union "supports the status-quo in Central America and does not want to make Nicaragua into another Cuba." White's assessment is based on his talks with topranking Soviet officials during his recent trip to the Soviet Union. (San Francisco Chronicle, Nov. S, 1987)

At the very moment White was speaking, Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega was in Moscow to attend the 70th anniversary celebrations of the Russian Revolution. The Esquipulas II Central American "peace plan" was about to go into effect, and news commentators throughout the world wondered what Mikhail Gorbachev's message to Ortega would be.

This question was soon answered. On Nov. 7, House Speaker Jim Wright told national TV that "Gorbachev [had] made it clear to Ortega that Moscow is not interested in financing a war in Central America." Wright offered no further details, explaining only that he had this information from "reliable sources."

The following week, on Nov. 12, Ortega was asked directly by a U.S. Journalist at a nationally televised press conference in Washington, D.C., what the Soviet premier's advice had been.

The reporter's question was as interesting as the answer. "A top U.S. official has stated that Gorbachev told you to negotiate with the contras and even seek some form of power-sharing with them. Is this true?" the reporter asked.

Ortega did not confirm or deny this statement, preferring to dodge the question altogether. "The Soviet Union understands our situation and agrees with what we are doing," Ortega said.

But when a leader of the contra directorate, Alfredo Cesar, was asked by The New York Times (Nov. 8) why the Sandinistas had shifted their position and finally agreed to negotiate with the contras, he replied: "Ortega was told by Mikhail Gorbachev that he had to negotiate."

At any rate, the Sandinista government was pressured into indirect cease-fire negotiations with the contras, which the Sandinistas had vowed they would never do. The Soviet bureaucracy's role in pressuring the Sandinistas into granting political legitimacy to the contras was decisive.

These events give full meaning to what Gorbachev said in February, when he pledged to seek "world stability" and "peaceful coexistence" with U.S. imperialism.

Miranda Collet, international editor of Barricada Internacional, the Englishlanguage weekly of the Nicaraguan Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), recently visited the San Francisco offices of Socialist Action as part of her U.S. tour to promote Barricada Internacional.

Collet outlined the Nicaraguan government's views on the current peace plan in a discussion with Jeff Mackler, national secretary of Socialist Action.

"Hopefully," she said, "the U.S. government will be willing to understand what self-determination really means and will have some respect for a country which has taken its destiny into its own hands.

Scan page 13

government was unserious about political

----- pull-quotes -----

Brooklyn, NY 11240-4830 IMPACI ISUALS