MUSKIE SAYS DELAYS ON FOREIGN AID BILLS UNDERCUT U.S. POLICY

• Published in: The New York times
• Main Author: KIHSS, PETER
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, N.Y New York Times Company 08.07.1980
• Edition: Late Edition (East Coast)
• Subjects: Muskie, Edmund
• ISSN: 0362-4331

''There is no lack of rhetoric calling for more American leadership in the world,'' Mr. [Edmund S. Muskie] told a Foreign Policy Association luncheon attended by 1,200 people Excerpts from speech, page A4. at the New York Hilton hotel. ''Then we must be prepared to pay the costs that leadership requires.'' Decreases in foreign aid, he said, would ''help the Soviets exploit internal instability in Nicaragua, in El Salvador and in many other places.'' Americans, he said, should ''resist Soviet expansionism not only militarily but by helping other nations defend their freedom and feed their people.'' It is better, Mr. Muskie said, to help grow crops than to send soldiers to fight wars resulting from hunger and exploitation. But the delay in aid to Nicaragua and its moderate leaders, he said, has ''called into question'' United States willingness to work for democracy. He added, ''By failing to support the alternatives to radicalism, we help radicalism to breed.''