Talking About Talking

Signs of flexibility on Central American negotiations

All of a sudden, a flurry of diplomatic activity made it appear as though everyone was willing, even anxious, to sit down and discuss the complex crises in Central America. Nicaragua claimed that it was eager for talks with the U.S. The top U.S. diplomat in El Salvador proposed that the country’s government should “consider options to end the massacre,” which was interpreted to mean talking with the rebel leaders. Earlier, an American envoy had flown to Havana for talks with Cuban President Fidel Castro, suggesting to some that the two major Caribbean Basin antagonists might agree to work directly on easing tensions in the region. But beneath these surface signs of flexibility, there remained serious doubts within the Reagan Administration about what might emerge from all these talks about talks, since so much of the interchange between the parties involved depended on the outcome of Sunday’s elections in El Salvador (see WORLD).

In part, the diplomatic dance was prompted by Mexican Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda’s zealous pursuit of a peace plan put forward in February by President José López Portillo. The plan calls for negotiations between the U.S. and Cuba, the U.S. and Nicaragua, and the government and rebels in El Salvador. By conducting a highly publicized shuttle among the parties involved, Castañeda hoped to convince Washington that it should appear as amenable to these talks as its adversaries claimed to be.

The possibility that the U.S. might want to establish a Cuban connection was particularly intriguing. Washington has long insisted that Havana’s efforts to export its revolution, with the help of its Nicaraguan ally, is a prime cause of the four-year-old Salvadoran civil war. In early March, Secretary of State Alexander Haig secretly dispatched his favorite troubleshooter, General Vernon Walters, to Havana to press this point. Castro reportedly told Walters, a former deputy director of the CIA, that while Cuba supports the Salvadoran leftists, it is not currently supplying them with arms. Castro expressed his readiness to address these and other issues in direct negotiations with the U.S.

Walters’ mission was not the first such overture. Haig had had a private meeting with Cuban Vice President Carlos Rafael Rodríguez last November in Mexico City. From the U.S. perspective, the discussions have not gone as well as they might have, since the Cubans refuse to address the problem of Havana’s adventurism in Latin America and Africa. Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Enders told a House Appropriations subcommittee last week: “We have tried to talk with Cuba in the past, and it would be wrong to rule out trying again. But the record is daunting.”

Serious negotiations between the U.S. and Nicaragua are far more likely. The central issues: Nicaragua’s charges that the U.S. is threatening it with covert action and military invasion, and Washington’s contention that the Sandinista regime is directing the left-wing insurgency in El Salvador. Daniel Ortega Saavedra, coordinator of the Nicaraguan junta, traveled to New York City last week to make his government’s case before an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council. “Aggressive and destabilizing actions against Nicaragua by the U.S. Administration have been dramatically on the rise,” Ortega insisted. But he called reports of American willingness to negotiate “encouraging” and added, “We are willing to begin immediately direct and frank conversations.” U.S. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick described Ortega’s charges as “paranoid and ridiculous,” but reiterated the U.S. commitment to negotiate. She cited a five-point U.S. plan, outlined by Enders last August in Managua, that includes a mutual nonaggression treaty and an end to Nicaraguan support of Salvadoran rebels.

Ortega also restated the desire of El Salvador’s left-wing guerrillas for a negotiated settlement. The U.S. has consistently opposed negotiations that would require the government to give up at the bargaining table what the insurgents have not been able to win on the battlefield or at the polls. Indeed, “negotiated settlement” has become something of a loaded code phrase to describe the approach embraced by the French, as well as some members of the U.S. Congress, that would force the Salvadoran government to share power with leftists. But one staunch supporter of Salvadoran President José Napoleón Duarte’s hard line against dealing with the guerrillas, Venezuelan President Luis Herrera Campins, said last week that his country did not rule out negotiations once a newly elected constituent assembly in El Salvador is formed.

Realizing that the Administration’s refusal to consider negotiations was costing it heavily in public and diplomatic support, U.S. officials began hinting about “dialogues” and “discussions” with all parties involved, including the guerrillas. In San Salvador, U.S. Ambassador Deane Hinton said that the newly elected Salvadoran government might have to “show a certain flexibility.” Lest Hinton’s words be seen as a sign of weakness or a lack of faith in the government, U.S. officials stressed that any talks would focus not on giving power to the rebels but merely bringing them back into the electoral process. Said Haig: “We have never rejected a negotiated solution. But we mean negotiations by all parties on participation in the democratic process. We reject negotiations that constitute a distribution of national power over the heads of the people of El Salvador.”

There are almost too many imponderables to contemplate. Washington continues to hope that Duarte’s centrist coalition will consolidate its power in El Salvador’s elections, carry on efforts at domestic reform and eventually bring responsible left-wing elements into the political mainstream. The Administration is now simply more willing to talk about talking—and to use the hitherto forbidden word negotiation—although at week’s end the State Department was discomfited by what it called Mexico’s “premature” announcement of a U.S.-Nicaraguan parley in April. For that matter, there is no evidence yet that the postures of flexibility struck by Cuba and Nicaragua last week represented any real change of policy on their parts. It is plainly in each country’s interest to appear accommodating. The real question is not whether the assorted adversaries want to talk but what they seriously want to talk about.

—By Walter Isaacson. Reported by Johanna McGeary/Washington