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SOLIDARITY

By PASTOR VALLE-GARAY

One of the most significant revelations
produced by the scandal-riddled White
House deal that sent profits to the contras
from the sales of U.S. arms to Iran, is
Washington’s shameless acknowledgement
of its highest degree of responsibility for
conducting an illegal, immoral and unde-
clared war against Nicaragua. For the last
four years, in spite of Congressional aid to
the contras, President Reagan has denied
that this was indeed Washington’s war.
Now it is out in the open that the whole war
operation has been directed all alng from
the offices of the National Security Council
located in the basement of the White
House.

On his return to the White House from a
Thanksgiving holiday in California, Presi-
dent Reagan praised former White House
aid. Lt.-Col. Oliver North as “a national
hero.” Before being fired by Reagan from
the National Security council in the wake of
the U.S. arms scam on Iran, Lt.-Col. North
was considered by the contras’ political
leadership in Miami as their “most commit-
ted and most able supporter.” North is also

considered responsible for the creation ofa .

U.S.-manned air force that delivered wea-
pons to the contras in Central America.

One of these flights was shot down in
Nicaraguan territory last October by Nica-
raguan military forces, resulting in the
deaths of two American citizens, an uniden-
tified Latin American and the capture of
U.S. mercenary Eugene Hasenfus, now
serving 30 years in prison in Nicaragua for
this and other criminal actions against the
Nicaragua people.

Immediately after their Lt.-Col. North
was fired by Reagan, the contras became
despondent. Through an official spokes-
man in Miami, the contra leadership
lamented that “we may now be seen as
nothing more than the pet project ofa lame-
duck president. If that’s the way It Is we re
finished.” got

This is a clear and obvious admission of
the fact stated by the government of Nica-
ragua and others that the whole lame-

- brained idea and execution of Washington’s

~ or otherwise, of representing t

and Reagan’s personal war against cogil
gua is a White House project, and that 5 e
contras are incapable, politically, militarily

an alternative to the Sandinista government.
Reagan’s war against Nicaragua ‘eee eh
ordered stopped by the International ‘ou
of Justice at the Hague, a age see
whelmingly endorsed by the ae
Nations’ General Assembly in November,

hemselves as

Nicaraguans demonstrate in Managua against contra intervention.

- Scandals bare U.S.-contra connections —

1986. Most civilized nations in the world,
including Canada and other NATO allies of
the United States, have condemned and
opposed Reagan’s war, and now the contras
admit that without the White House they
are “finished.”

The contras know that inside Nicaragua
there is no popular support for their crimi-
nal, illegal and immoral war. In spite of
causing the death of 33,000 Nicaraguans,
mostly civilians, and over $1-billion in losses
to our nation’s care centres, hospitals,
schools, health centres and agricultural
crops and equipment, the vast majority of
the Nicaraguan people remain resolutely
determined to destroy any attempt by the
contras, or any foreign forces, to overthrow
the government of Nicaragua.

The Central American nations of Costa
Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras
and Panama have publicly rejected Wash-
ington’s overtures to train the contras in
their territories. Washington has decided to
train them on U.S. soil in spite of the fact
that a recent U.S. polls showed that 62 per
cent of the American people are against any
further aid to the contras and an even larger
percentage believe that their president had

_ lied to them about the contra issues. Secre-

tary of Defence Caspar Weinberger, while
attending NATO meeting in Europe last
week, said that he was “horrified” to learn
of the diversion of profits from the sales of
arms to Iran to the Nicaraguan rebels: “It
was totally the wrong thing to do, in my

‘ opinion,” said Weinberger at a press con-

ference in Paris.

At the congressional hearings being con-
ducted to investigate the legality of the
transfer of funds to the contras from the
profits of the U.S. arms sales to Iran, both
Lt.-Col. North and Vice Admiral John
Poindexter, former National Security adviser
to President Reagan and North’s boss, have
taken the Sth amendment so many times as
to render useless the testimony of the inves-
tigation’s two star witnesses.

All of these are solid indications that
Reagan is fighting not only an illegal war,
but also an unpopular war against Nicara-
gua and a war he cannot possibly win with
the contras.

Perhaps it is time that President Reagan
realizes that he is not so much a “freedom
fighter too,” as he fancied himself on
national television a few weeks ago, but
rather just another tired, old soldier of for-
tune whose lunch has finally run out, and
that in this unpopular cause he is dragging
the good name of the United States through
mud in the national and international
spheres.

Perhaps it is time to let Nicaragua, and
the rest of the world, live in peace.

Perhaps this is the best of times for the
White House to have the courage to admit
its mistakes and, in the spirit of Christmas
and goodwill, to mend fences at home and
abroad.

Perhaps it is high time, for President
Reagan, Lt.-Col. North, Vice-Admiral
Poindexter and the rest of the cowboys at
the White House to put away their guns and
to get going with the most serious business
of restoring dignity and democracy to the
battered image of the United States.

All of this requires courage and a truly
revolutionary spirit, perhaps even a pro-
found spirit of goodwill to mankind.

This Christmas is perhaps the best of

times for President Reagan to acquire some |

of that spirit and to gamble that a change in
the course of events in Central America by
the White House might be the only honora-
ble thing left for his administration.
Perhaps then President Reagan will be
remembered as a man who at least attemp-
ted to give some peace to this turbulent
world and to allow the Nicaraguan people
to get on with their lives with respect and

dignity rather that a president obsessed __

with destroying by violent means that which
he cannot deal with through reason and
sanity.

Pastor Valle-Garay is Consul General of

Nicaragua in Toronto.

At its Dec. 5-7 meeting the central
committee of the Communist Party of
Canada released the following statement
on the current situation in Nicaragua.

Recent disclosures — as to Washing-
ton’s arms-to-Iran and dollars-to-contras
plotting with Israeli government com-
plicity — have fully revealed U.S. impe-
rialism’s brutal undeclared war against
Nicaragua with the aim of overthrowing
its democratic Sandinista government.
With these revelations the Reagan
administration’s sordid support of the
terrorist “contra” gangs’ attacks on the
Nicaraguan people has been totally
exposed.

The Canadian people have increas-
ingly seen as their own the struggle of the
Nicaraguan people in defending their
freedom and independence. They have
demonstrated their solidarity conceretely
in the already more than five million
dollars of aid Canadians have sent the
Nicaraguan people.

The danger of direct U.S. military
intervention against their country has
today increased. Now more than ever the
freedom-loving people of Nicaragua
stand in need of solidarity support in
their heroic defence of the right to inde-
pendence and sovereignty.

US. interventionist actions against
Nicaragua also threaten the security of
other countries of that region, including
socialist Cuba. These U.S. actions — in
defiance of world opinion, of interna-

Hands off Nicaragua,
CP resolution demands

tional law and of the laws of the US.
itself, and of the United Nations’
condemnation — have created a dan-
gerous flash-point in Central America,
aggravating the tense international situa-
tion and posing a threat to world peace.
This meeting of the central committee
of the Communist Party of Canada
therefore calls for increased solidarity of
all the progressive and democratic forces
in our country with the struggle of the
Nicaraguan people. Our Party resolves
to continue and to expand our work in
solidarity support of their struggle, seek-
ing more effectively to combine human-
itarian and political concrete actions.

These actions should include demands
directed to the Mulroney government:

@ That it cease its tacit approval of
U.S. aggressive actions against the San-
dinsita government and people of Nica-
ragua.

@ That it reaffirm the Canadian
government's earlier positions both of
opposition to U.S. intervention in Cen-
tral America and of Canada’s support
of the Contadora group's plan for a
peaceful settlement of the conflict in that
region.

e@ That the Canadian government
provide economic assistance to demo-
cratic Nicaragua.

The Reagan administration must be
compelled to heed the demand of the
world progressive and democratic forces.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 17, 1986 e 15