Oscar Arias Central Quotations

If there is no peace in Central America, it will not be because Costa Rica, and myself as president, have not done what is necessary to obtain peace.

Free trade will go a long way toward alleviating poverty in Central America. Yet trade alone is not enough.

I saw no reason why other nations should tell Central Americans how to solve their problems.

Latin America has not achieved the development that it deserves... I'm not optimistic for all of Latin America, not only for Central America.

The absence of significant development aid has only increased the importance of trade for Central America's future.

Although fostering a peaceful, prosperous and equitable hemisphere is clearly in the best interest of the United States, Washington has not always supported Central America's struggle for economic survival.

The Central American isthmus is a region of great contrasts, but also of heartening unison. Millions of men and women share dreams of freedom and progress.

The plight of the terrified Central American children who have flooded across the U.S. border to escape violence and poverty in their homelands has launched a passionate and often bitter debate in Washington.

We had the courage to face the superpowers that wanted a military triumph for each side they supported in Central America. We told them, 'No,' and presented a peace plan.

We seek in Central America not peace alone, not peace to be followed someday by political progress, but peace and democracy, together, indivisible, an end to the shedding of human blood, which is inseparable from an end to the suppression of human rights.