(4 of 4)
At week's end the contras and some of their Nicaraguan civilian allies weighed in, calling on Ortega to declare a cease-fire in the conflict between the two sides, guarantee civil liberties in Nicaragua and establish by March 20 a general amnesty for political crimes. The White House, for its part, seemed intent on soldiering on in the propaganda war over Nicaragua. Before Shultz and Ortega held their meeting, President Reagan extolled the contras to a group of U.S. conservatives meeting in Washington as "the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers and the brave men and women of the French Resistance." He told the gathering, "We cannot turn away from them. For the struggle here is not right vs. left, but right vs. wrong." However it is described, the struggle will be long: Administration officials consider it unlikely that the funding question will formally come in front of Congress before April, perhaps even as late as May.