Building A Contra CONSENSUS

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When the House of Representatives unexpectedly voted against restoring any kind of aid to antigovernment rebels in Nicaragua, an angry Ronald Reagan vowed to push for legislation providing for assistance "again and again." The President overestimated the challenge.

Last week, not two months after turning thumbs down on his first request for $14 million in aid for the U.S.-supported rebels, the House voted handily to approve a second version calling for nearly twice as much, $27 million. Since the Senate had already approved a Reagan-sponsored aid authorization package of its own, the vote made it all but certain that the contras will shortly start receiving funds from Washington again after a hiatus of a year.

The outcome in the House was a major victory for Reagan, if only because it reversed one of the most embarrassing foreign policy setbacks of his presidency. Last week's vote sent a message of U.S. resolve not only to the contras, who have suffered some supply shortages but have managed to remain largely intact during the cutoff (see box). The congressional turnabout also reassured other governments in the region, notably those of Honduras and Costa Rica, from whose territory the rebels stage their forays into Nicaragua. Finally, the showdown over the contras vindicated Reagan's strategy of legislative persistence, a political trademark sometimes dismissed by his critics as merely a streak of Irish stubbornness.

Reagan made some major concessions to round up a majority in the Democratic-controlled House. U.S. aid to the contras will be limited to humanitarian supplies, such as food and medicine. Even defensive military equipment like radar is precluded in the House plan, though such items may be permitted in the Senate version. Restrictions on how U.S. aid can be used are largely technicalities, however, since the contras can now divert funds from nonlethal supplies to the purchase of more military goods.

A second, and potentially more important, difference between the House and Senate packages involves what agency will administer them. The House specifically prohibited the Administration from assigning the CIA to the job, as Reagan would like, while the Senate made no such stipulation. Nonetheless, in a provision fiercely safeguarded by the Administration, the House voted to let the CIA confer with the contras on intelligence, no matter who administers the aid. The two chambers have a few other points still to be reconciled, including the fact that the Senate authorized a larger sum ($38 million).

Reagan's most effective step in changing congressional minds was a declaration that U.S. assistance was designed not to overthrow the pro-Moscow Sandinista regime but to pressure it into coming to peaceful terms with its domestic opposition. In a letter to Oklahoma Democrat Dave McCurdy, who helped shape the compromise bill, Reagan said, "My Administration is determined to pursue political, not military, solutions in Central America." He also offered to explore "how and when the U.S. could resume useful direct talks with Nicaragua," which were broken off last January by Washington.