Clinton Wants Peace, Stability

At the beginning of his trip to Central America, President Clinton was talking about disaster relief from the terrible damage brought by Hurricane Mitch.

Tuesday, he talked about reconstruction.

Wednesday is big picture day.

Mr. Clinton talked Wednesday about the long-term stability and restoration of Central America, reports CBS White House Correspondent Bill Plante.

President Clinton met with a carefully chosen group of almost 60 Guatemalans to discuss the country's civil war and the peace agreement signed in December 1996.

The agreement ended 36 years of fighting.

The one-hour session was Mr. Clinton's first official activity in his visit to Guatemala, part of a four-country tour of Central America. It came two weeks after Guatemala's truth commission issued its long-awaited report on the war.

The commission found enough blame to go around. It said all participants were guilty of the deaths and disappearances of more than 200,000 people: the government, the leftist guerrillas and the United States, which provided arms, money and spies to the government.

The United States has a long history of treating Central America as something of a colony.

It absorbed the country's raw materials and it supported the strong men who controlled those materials and who controlled the people.

But in the '70s and '80s, there were violent clashes between the left and right in all four nations Mr. Clinton is visiting.

In El Salvador, 75,000 people were victims of political murder or disappeared. In Guatemala, where Clinton goes later Wednesday, at least 200,000 died or disappeared.

President Clinton also wanted to acknowledge, then bury, the U.S. record of complicity in Central American coups, dictatorships and civil wars during the 1970s and '80s.

The reconstruction after Mitch could, with U.S. help, be a "fresh start to move forward and continue democratic efforts," White House spokesman Michael Hammer said.

"Clearly we are in a post-Cold War era. Circumstances have changed and the president has made a point to ensure that mistakes of the past and policy of the past will not be repeated," Hammer said.

Mr. Clinton wants to proclaim the beginning of a new era of democracy in Central America. He wants to support these countries in a way that encourages rather than inhibits the formation of democracy.

One way these countries want to do that is with trade, but the president doesn't have enough trade to offer.

They want the same sort of free trade deal that Mexico has, but it won't get through Congress.

So the people here will accept what they can get from the United States, but they wish there were more.