News In Brief
| Washington
Reagan calls arms aid and rights linkage 'phony'
President Reagan said Monday that those who try to link military aid and human rights are ''either naive or downright phony,'' and accused his critics of assisting Marxist takeovers in Central America.
In a sharply worded address to some 200 Cuban Americans, Reagan also declared that Cuba and the Soviet Union are pulling a power play in the Caribbean.
''Our challenge is to avert a crisis before it happens - to help our neighbors build strong economies, democratic governments, and give them weapons to counter Soviet-backed insurgency,'' Reagan told the gathering, from which reporters were excluded.
